Weight Loss Prevention
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SIMPLE STRATEGY IDENTIFIES RESPONSIVE RESIDENTS
Is there, in fact, a reliable method for accurately identifying which residents will eat more if offered adequate help at mealtimes? Yes. It's an assessment method that we've used successfully in other care areas (see our training modules on incontinence management and mobility decline prevention) and one we found works equally well with feeding assistance. It's a simple method based on common sense: Offer at-risk residents ample feeding assistance for a few days and monitor their food and fluid intake. Those who ate more as a result of the intervention are "responsive" to it; those who didn't are "unresponsive." In other words, the intervention either works or it doesn't, and there's no reason to expect its effect to alter unless there is a significant, unrelated change--for better or worse--in the resident's condition. This same strategy also works to identify residents who respond well to the snack intervention.
A word of warning: Don't, as so many nursing home staff do, use a resident's cognitive status to assess responsiveness to this or most other daily care interventions (e.g., scheduled toileting assistance). Time and again, we have found that residents with severe cognitive impairment are nevertheless highly responsive to these simple behavioral interventions (1, 3, 4).
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