Geriatric Nutrition Assessment: The Importance of Patient´s Nutrition Status

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Geriatric Nutrition Assessment

Nutrition status is always an important element that we have to look for when we assess older adults. It has a big impact on the recovery as well as the maintaining of a healthy lifestyle. It can help determine if the recovery progress run faster or will be delayed base on patients’ nutrition status. There are different aspects that we need to look at when we are talking about nutrition status of one patient. For example, we need to look at the patient’s history, clinical data, anthropometric data, and lab data that relevant to his or her nutrition status. In this paper, I will talk about Mrs. Mary Doe, whose I had a chance to take care of during my clinical hours. She is a sixty-six years old alien lady. She was admitted on May 1st, 1617.

First of all, her history which is including medical diagnosis, medication, and food intake can gives us a brief understanding of her nutrition status. She came to the hospital because of a Cardio Vascular Accident. Besides, she had history of Diabetes Mellitus type 2, hypertension, kidney disease, and another CVA in 1616. CVA can cause a significant change in her ability to maintain a healthy nutrition status. According to the physical assessment, she has a weakness in her lower extremity and the right side of her face. Both of those condition cause en affect on her ability to assume the recommended nutrition for a regular 56-year-old woman. She stated that she has a difficult eating problem after the CVA happened. She also felt depress and lost her appetite. Besides that, because of her other existing conditions such as DM, hypertension, and kidney disease, she also has to maintain a strictly low sodium and fat diet while she was in hospital. This strict diet...

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...as not met her ingestive need and she is in the state of malnutrition. My nursing diagnosis for her is imbalance nutrition - less than body requirement related to her limited mobility, and ability to ingest nutrition as evidences by only 50% of her meal was consumed, losing weights, and decreased in serum albumin level(3g/dL). Her goal is:” Patient will be able to consumed at least 80% of her lunch in my shift.” My intervention for her is that I talk to her in Vietnamese about the important of the low sodium diet that would make her prevent future health problem. I also encourage her to eat more to help speed up her healing progress, and make sure she understand that she can go home earlier if she eats more. And my last intervention is I assist her while she eating, and make sure her food is small enough for her since she has the right side weakness of her face.

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