Up to four in 10 people admitted to hospital in the UK are undernourished and doctors need to do more to improve the situation, according to a new report from the Royal College of Physicians.
Malnourished patients are more prone to infection and take longer to recover from hospital treatment and be discharged, the report states, an unnecessary burden on the already overstretched NHS, to say nothing of the undue suffering caused by patients.
The RCP report suggests that the simplest way to overcome this problem would be to include nutritional testing of all patients as a standard procedure when patients are admitted to hospital, and for doctors to be given more training on this particular aspect of patient health.
Professor Peter Kopelman, chair of the Royal College of Physicians working party, said: "Too often nutritional status and nutritional management are overlooked in clinical practice to the detriment of patient care. The report draws attention to the importance of identifying and treating the nutritional need of our patients. Such interventions involve a team approach that be necessity includes health professionals, NHS managers and those involved in health education and training."
Part of the problem is that hospital food is so unappetising, and the principal means of improving the nutritional intake of patients is therefore one of the least effective. With this in mind, hospital menus have been improved with the help of leading chefs - although the limited budgets available means that the food is unlikely ever to be classified as cordon bleu.
Furthermore, many hospitals and homes have struggled to introduce the new menus because of budget restrictions.