Effects of nutritional education on knowledge, attitude and practice among hospitalized elderly patients

Abstract

One hundred and twenty elderly inpatients (average aged 78) were randomly sampled from the Department of Geriatrics, Peking University People's Hospital for a questionnaire survey on the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) before and after receiving nutritional education. The results showed that the average score for nutrition knowledge of the subjects was 46 ± 21 and 85 ± 18 before and after nutrition education respectively (P ＜0. 01 ); the progress for patients aged over 80 was more remarkable:nutrition knowledge score increased to 83 ± 18 from 41 ±21 on the admission ( P ＜0. 01 ). Before nutritional education, the rates of treatment diet implementation, ordinary diet implementation and hospital repast were 48.9%, 57.7% and 50. 8%, respectively, which reached to 93. 6%, 100. 0% and 95.0% after nutritional education (P ＜0. 01 ). The results indicate that the nutrition education is an effective approach to improve nutritional KAP among elderly inpatients. We propose to implement nutrition education in elderly inpatients as a routine clinical treatment measures. Key words: Health education; Health knowledge,attitudes,practice