Abstract

Purpose
Most hospitals have been reply to the con-sultation if the needed departments consult with the Nutritional Support Team (NST) for patient evaluation and management. However, as a common occurrence, some people requiring treatment cannot receive care due to lack of cognition of nutritional support and lack of re-sources for assessment of nutritional status. Methods: We provide an indication for screening of pa-tients and for active nutritional support. Indications in-clude symptoms that reflect the conditions of increasing nutritional requirement and decreasing nutritional supply. Two surgical wards and surgical intensive care unit were included and nursing teams recommended patients to the NST by interviewing inpatients if they met the indications. Results: We included 60 patients referred to the NST be-fore applying for screening, from January 2005 to January 2009 and 44 patients selected for only five months by the NST after applying for screening. The number of con-sultations showed a slow decrease, 27 in 2005, 23 in 2006 to 10 in 2007, before applying for screening, but in-creased significantly to 44 for only five months after ap-plying for screening. While the number of departments applying to the NST was five departments in 2005, six departments in 2006, and two departments in 2007, it in-creased significantly to eight departments. After applying for screening, the most common cause was ‘artificial nu-trition longer than five days’ in 48.1%; the second cause was ‘poor nutrition status’ in 13.5%, and the third was ‘significant weight loss’ or ‘gastrointestinal function change’ in 8%. Moderate risk patients showed improvement and shifted to minor risk patients and normal patients. The rate of improvement was approximately 47.7%.Conclusion: The screening tools should be simple, as well as easy to use. Therefore, using this tool, we must actively select patients with poor nutrition and apply the screening tools rapidly. (J Korean Soc Parenter Enter Nutr 2013;5(3):117-121)

• Keywords: Nutritional Support Team, Nutritional status, Screening