The Readiness Among Nutrition Support Hospital Staff for the Implementation of the Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment.

PURPOSE: To timely tackle malnutrition in hospital patients, the implementation of a new malnutrition practice is needed. We aimed to determine the readiness of nutrition support hospital staff for implementing a new malnutrition practice, using the Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) instrument.

PARTICIPANTS AND

METHODS

A cross-sectional assessment of readiness among nutrition support hospital staff was conducted using semi-structured interviews. Interviews were scored across five dimensions of the community readiness model: Knowledge of efforts, Leadership, Community climate, Knowledge of the issue, and Resources for efforts. A general score and a dimension score (mean and standard deviation) were calculated. Scores could range from 1 (no awareness) to 9 (community ownership).

RESULTS

In total, 11 respondents, including physicians (n=2), dietitian (n=1), physiotherapists (n=3), speech therapists (n=2), nutritional assistants (n=2), and a manager (n=1) were interviewed. The general community readiness score was 4.0±0.3, indicating the preplanning stage for the implementation of the PG-SGA. All five dimensions were in the preplanning range (3.5-4.5). Resources was lowest (3.5 ± 0.9; range 3.0-4.0), and Knowledge of efforts was highest (4.5 ± 1.9; range 2.0-7.0); the scores of the remaining dimensions clustered around ~4.0. No dimension score exceeded the preplanning stage.

CONCLUSION

Readiness to implement the PG-SGA was uniformly low (ie, at preplanning stage) across CRM dimensions, with resources most limited and awareness of existing efforts highest, yet still in the preplanning stage. Recommendations are directed to hospital leadership/clinical leaders and to interprofessional nutrition teams, with targeted training for all professionals involved in nutritional care to enable progression toward implementation.