Nutrition and hydration
Welcome to this online resource about nutrition and hydration.
Nutrition and hydration are essential to health and well being. When well managed they provide a vital contribution for people recovering from illness and for those at risk of malnutrition. When managed poorly they pose a significant threat to patient safety.
This site brings together what we currently know about the quality of care in these areas and the strategies required to improve, based on the experience of four country and local initiatives.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) was a supporting partner of the nutrition and hydration week 23-29 January 2012 entitled “A taste of patient safety”. Details of the week's activities and recordings of the WebEx sessions held during the week are available on the Patient Safety First website.
The RCN has developed online learning around nutritional care and worked with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to develop robust methods of assessing the quality of nutritional care (CQC 2010; RCN 2010a).
The Royal College of Nursing has campaigned to raise standards in this area. You can read a summary of the Nutrition Now campaign.
We have drawn on the experience of the campaign and we have used the RCN's Principles of Nursing Practice to organise the way the site is set out (RCN 2010b).
For a full overview of the contents of this resource on nutrition and hydration see how to use this resource.
References
These resources were last accessed on 20 January 2012. Some of them are in PDF format - see how to access PDF files.
CQC and RCN (2010) Observation prompts and guidance for monitoring compliance: Guidance for CQC inspectors. Outcome 5: Meeting nutritional needs. London: CQC.
RCN (2010a) CPD online learning: Supporting people’s nutritional needs – getting started. RCN website.
RCN (2010b) Principles of Nursing Practice. RCN website.