Enrolled nurses' perceptions of providing nutritional care to hospitalised older people in Singapore's acute care setting: A qualitative descriptive study.

Abstract

Malnutrition is a growing challenge in health care as its prevalence among hospitalised older people is expected to intensify alongside the rapidly ageing world's population. Singapore's nursing framework adopts enrolled nurses as the main providers to nutritional care, where nutritional care is a process of screening, assessment, intervention, continuous monitoring and documentation. This is the first Asian study conducted on enrolled nurses' perceptions of nutritional care. To explore enrolled nurses' perceptions of providing nutritional care to hospitalised older people in Singapore's acute care setting. This is a qualitative descriptive study. Individual face-to-face semi-structured interviews using an interview guide were conducted with 15 enrolled nurses from September 2017 to January 2018. The collected data were analysed using content analysis. Four main categories were identified as follows: (1) The role of enrolled nurses in the provision of nutritional care, (2) Perceived enablers in nutritional care, (3) Perceived challenges in nutritional care and (4) Proposed strategies to improve nutritional care. This study provided insights to the perceived roles of enrolled nurses in nutritional care. It also outlined the enablers and challenges faced by the enrolled nurses and their suggestions to improve nutritional care provision. One critical finding was the need to better engage families and domestic helpers in nutritional care of older people. To optimise nutritional care delivery, healthcare institutions should explore ways to engage and involve families and domestic helpers during older patients' mealtimes. Nurses could also educate older people, their families and domestic helpers on the importance of nutritional care during hospitalisation.