Digital Heathcare Team is supporting nutrition at WUTH

The Digital Healthcare team (DHT) have always worked closely with dietitians and the wider Nutrition and Hydration Working Group to help support the care of our patients.

The MUST assessment (Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool) has been through several changes since it was introduced, with each new change providing improved functionalities to help our patients get the care they need, such as the automated referral to dietitians based on MUST score. 

Standard referrals have also been through some changes enabling staff to be clearer about the service and support needed enabling dietitians to triage their work list more easily. 

Food chart and fluid balance orders have also been introduced to aid ward staff to identify patients who should have their intake monitored. Most recently, the ability for ward staff to document the supportive equipment to be used to aid the patient during mealtimes has been added.

Moving forward, The DHT team will continue to work with our Dietitians and wider team to create a digital replacement for the ward nutrition white boards. This will allow nutrition and hydration related details, entered on Millennium, to be viewed as a patient list mpage and show the details of dietary requirements, nutrition support, food, and fluid chart requirements. This can be seen in the image attached.

The Nutrition and Hydration Working Group are looking to pilot these boards on a few wards before a trust wide roll out.