Assessment and monitoring of the nutritional status of hospitalized patients: a proposal based on the opinion of the scientific community

Objective Malnutrition can adversely affect the clinical course of hospitalized patients and increase the length of hospital stay. The objective of this study was to certify procedures for assessing and following the nutritional status of hospitalized patients accepted by the clinical nutrition research community, professors and professionals. Methods For this purpose, a questionnaire was administered via the Internet to the scientific community registered in the Lattes Platform-national system of online, unified curriculum database to support the activities of the state and federal research funding agencies. The questionnaire consists of recommendations together with a Likert scale and space for the participants to justify their reasons for partial acceptance or rejection of the procedure proposed. The procedure that obtained total agreement or partial agreement >= 70.0% was approved. Results Roughly one-third (35.2%) of the professionals who received the questionnaire answered it. Most of them (84.0%) were university professors; 62.0% were of public universities; 67.0% had a PhD; 63.0% had twenty years or more of professional experience; 74.0% were dietitians and 25.0% were physicians. The proposed procedures cover the following needs: screening for defining the complexity of nutritional care, indicators of nutritional assessment and monitoring during hospital stay and equipment and protocols for nutritional care. All the procedures were accepted by the interviewees. A screening model to define the complexity of nutritional care was proposed based on the accepted procedures. Conclusion Acceptance of the proposed procedures strengthens the acknowledgement of the need to implement standards for nutritional assessment and monitoring in hospitals.