Congress Abstracts 2006

66

DINING-ON-DEMAND: AN INPATIENT NURSING AND NUTRITION INITIATIVE. Melinda Kiser, RN, MSN, OCN^®, James Cancer Hospital at Ohio State University, Columbus, OH; and Liz Weinandy, RD, LD, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.

Oncology patients often struggle with proper nutrition due to changes in appetite and difficulty with oral intake. Being in the hospital setting adds to these eating challenges. A new, modified room service meal delivery model, Dining-On-Demand (DOD), was developed to allow patients to decide when and what they want to eat.

The purpose of this poster is to present the development and outcomes and the DOD model to improve patient satisfaction and nutrition for oncology patients while in the hospital setting. The outcomes that were measured were patient and staff satisfaction, missed meals and time to tray delivery. The learning objective will be for the reader to identify a new approach to meal service for oncology patients.

This model uses advance meal selection through handheld computers with innovative cold pre-plating of patient meal selections. As patients are ready to eat, nursing requests the trays through a custom-built web interface. Nutrition staff cook the food in a Rational(TM) self cooking center and deliver them to the patients within 30 minutes of request. The custom web interface has multiple features to track patient requests and missed meals.

A collaborative effort between many hospital departments enabled all of these initiatives. A nursing-nutrition partnership was established with a joint work group to develop DOD. Information Services developed a new computer application specific to DOD, the Marketing Department created educational flyers and all applicable staff were trained. Ongoing follow-up was accomplished to measure outcomes.

The trial resulted in 76% of the patients (n=80) preferring DOD compared to the traditional set meal time model and observed patient oral intake has increased. Nutrition staff have also reported increased job satisfaction since they had more time to spend with the patients. Overall patient satisfaction scores and dietary satisfaction scores were also improved since this new initiative began. Therefore, this model has shown to be effective in assisting oncology patients with their dietary needs while in the hospital setting.

Implications for nursing practice are to advocate/develop for a DOD model to improve oncology patient satisfaction and nutrition efforts in the hospital environment.