Nutritional assessment of patients before gastrointestinal surgery and nurses' approach to this issue

Aims and objectives. This study was conducted to evaluate the nutritional status of patients before gastrointestinal surgery and to reveal nurses' opinions about this issue. Background. Although there is increasing awareness that malnutrition constitutes an important problem, especially when it accompanies diseases, malnutrition in hospitalized patients is not being diagnosed or treated. Design. This study was descriptive. Methods. Subjective global assessment and anthropometric/biochemical measurements were used to evaluate the nutritional status of 57 patients hospitalized for gastrointestinal surgery. Related opinions of eight nurses were obtained via semi-structured interviews. Results. The malnutrition rate was high in patients before gastrointestinal surgery, and the nurses were not able to evaluate nutritional status properly. Furthermore, the nurses lacked knowledge. Conclusions. This study indicates the importance of evaluating the nutritional status of patients before surgery and the necessity of developing nutritional support plans. Relevance to clinical practice. Our study showed that subjective global assessment is an easy and useful scale for evaluating the nutritional status of patients. Nurses are suitable team members for continuous nutritional care and therefore must not delegate this role.