A year long study that concluded last September has reported that more than 50 per cent of patients in NSW hospitals are malnourished.
Two thirds of those patients either presented to hospital in a malnourished state or worsened while they were in hospital. Two dieticians working in the NSW health system told an inquiry into the hospital system they had no input into what foods were served to patients and no dieticians were involved at the Department Of Health, which developed hospital menus … no doubt overseen by accountants.
According to Rhonda Matthews, leader of the study:
“Malnourished patients are also more subject to infection, dehydration, diarrhoea, depression and their wounds take longer to heal.
“We’ve found that the patients who have some degree of malnutrition in our hospitals were staying in hospital twice as long as those who were not malnourished.”
Joanne Prendergast said food, linen and other non-medical services were not incorporated into the overall patient care from a medical perspective, and she recommended more flexibility for individual patients’ dietary needs. She said:
“If they’re getting the food (packaged) presented in that way and they couldn’t access it they didn’t eat it,”
“They’re starving if we don’t support their nutritional needs.”
I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone arguing that the food is shit. In my experience it certainly is – you really have to be starving to want to eat it (not to mention the weird meal times, which are undoubtedly designed around staff rosters rather than patient needs), and inevitably only about 1/3 of the food served up is even vaguely worth eating. My last hospital experience goes back 8 years, but my son was there last year and hardly touched any of his food.
Next startling revelation – airline food is shit, too!
