What is nutritional assessment? A quick guide for critical care clinicians

Nutritional status is associated with patient outcomes such as length and cost of hospital stay, morbidity, and mortality. Trained nutrition professionals perform nutritional assessment to evaluate the patient's nutritional status, identify nutritional risk, and plan appropriate nutrition interventions. By being aware of key nutrition risk factors and by using simple methods to assess muscle stores, which may be depleted even if the patient is overweight or obese, other members of the healthcare team can help to identify who is at nutritional risk and who may be malnourished.
Source: Australian Critical Care - Category: Nursing Authors: Tags: Review Paper Source Type: research