4 Golden Rules for the Preparation of Food in Hospitals for Patients
Well or ill, the food we consume should be nutritionally full! Catering the appropriate food is extremely important, even though there are various diet needs that need to be fulfilled. The maximized options of food choices with dense nutritional values improve the intakes.
This is the fundamental way to be followed when dealing with a set up that is full of diversified food requirements yet each individuals food choices need to be addressed. In simple words, serving food efficiently in the hospital atmosphere.
Encompassing the healthy nutritional practices is a necessity in the hospitals more than a need. The food caterers in the hospitals are expected to serve the food that is dense with energy, nutrients and is able to provide solutions for the recognized issues such as lack-appetite and under-eating.
This blog is an attempt to provide guidelines on how the nutritional standards in hospitals could be met without being complained. Continue reading to know how these standards could be met by assessing the diet needs, menu planning, guidelines and practices that optimize the quality of food.
Assessing the Nutritional Needs of the Patients
- 1. The successful nutrition plan is the one that is devised after assessing the hospital population's diet needs.
- 2. There could be people who require more energy and nutrient-based diet, people who need moderate diet and people who need to take semi-solid or liquid foods.
- 3. There would many people who require a therapeutic diet. Assessment of eating and drinking likes need to be analyzed based on the collected food preference data from the patient before admission.
- 4. Assessment of the individual's physical capacity in eating should be analyzed to provide the alternative for the same.
Planning the Menu and Food Standards
- 1. The planning and standards are emphasized based on the type and quantity of each patient are in need of.
- 2. The ideal menu planning contains energy based, nutrient-based, protein-based, semi-solid and liquid-based diet options.
- 3. The healthy eating meal choice is meant for the individuals who require all the nutritional aspects equally and at a moderate level.
- 4. The higher energy and nutritionally dense meal are for the people who are experiencing poor appetite or for who are in need of increased nutritional intake.
- 5. The out-of-hour-meal need to be prepared and provided to the patients who were involved in medical activities at the general mealtime.
Provisioning Therapeutic Diet in hospitals
Therapeutic diets are modified normal diets that are prepared based on the instructions provided by the doctor or the authorized healthcare staff.
- 1. Patients will be provided with choices on food texture, the temperature, the nutrition and ingredient composition.
- 2. The preparation of therapeutic diet require essential knowledge and should help the individual to meet the health needs.
- 3.Each hospital will have their own protocol in composing the therapeutic diets and signed off by the authorized medical professional.
Religious, Regional and Ethnic Factors
- 1. It is essential to evaluate and implement the ethical, regional and religious food preferences of the patients. These are often referred to 'the special diets' in a hospital set up.
- 2. The food preparation tactics in the hospitals are expected to obey the protocols that are generally practiced by the religions or the ethnicities.
- 3. It is the responsibility of the hospital management to collect the data based on which the diet special diet is prepared.
- 4. It may sound like a challenging task to follow various cultural aspects while preparing food for the patients, in a general perspective, most of the times it would be the Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews and Buddhists.
Serving food for patients in hospitals requires a lot of effort and education of the staff to avoid errors in operations. An effective operations mechanism needs to be established to avoid such situations and experienced healthcare consultancies will help you in this aspect.