Kris Mogensen, MS, RD, LDN, CNSC, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Department of Nutrition, Boston, MA
A.S.P.E.N.’s 3rd annual Malnutrition Awareness Week™ kicked off on Monday, September 15 with one webinar on Monday and a chat with the experts on Tuesday. Today at 4:00pm EST, Kris Mogensen, MS, RD, LDN, CNSC, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston MA, will moderate the second webinar, “Making Optimal Nutrition a National Standard.”
Q: Why should people in the field of nutrition support attend this webinar?
KM: The webinar “Making Optimal Nutrition a National Patient Safety Goal” will highlight the importance of early recognition and intervention for hospitalized malnourished patients and the idea that bringing this issue to the level of a National Patient Safety Goal will emphasize the need to address and treat malnutrition to improve patient outcomes.
Q: What are you most excited for about the webinar? What do you think people should be excited for?
KM: All of the programs planned for Malnutrition Awareness Week™ will be amazing! “Making Optimal Nutrition a National Patient Safety Goal” has two fantastic speakers, Dr. Vihas Patel and our past President of A.S.P.E.N., Ainsley Malone! I’m excited to hear their thoughts on how to bring identification and treatment of malnutrition to such a high priority as a National Patient Safety Goal.
Q: What do you hope attendees will take away from this webinar?
KM: I hope that attendees of the webinar will bring the information back to their institutions—even if malnutrition is not a National Patient Safety Goal yet, attendees could address nutritional status as part of a safety initiative, for example, as part of pressure ulcer initiatives.
Q: What drew you to discuss the topic “Making Optimal Nutrition a National Standard? How does it relate to the larger conversation of malnutrition?
KM: I’ve been interested in the relationship between malnutrition and patient outcomes for a long time. I always had a hunch that there were correlations that were not adequately studied, and malnutrition likely had a negative impact on patient outcomes. My colleague, Dr. Kenneth Christopher, has a 90,000 patient database of critically ill patients and specific outcomes including mortality. We added nutritional status, as evaluated by a nutrition professional, to his database and found very interesting results showing that malnutrition is associated with increased sepsis, bloodstream infections, acute kidney injury, mortality, and in ICU survivors, readmission rates. So it’s been gratifying to see data supporting my hunch! We hope that by presenting our research that we will reinforce that malnutrition truly does have a negative impact on our patients, and we hope to see interventions developed specifically for malnourished patients and to drive initiatives to prevent malnutrition.
To register and participate in today’s webinar event on “Making Optimal Nutrition a National Standard” or more information visit www.nutritioncare.org/maw
Grateful for the wonderful presentations on malnutrition week.
KM states “My colleague, Dr. Kenneth Christopher, has a 90,000 patient database of critically ill patients and specific outcomes including mortality. We added nutritional status, as evaluated by a nutrition professional, to his database and found very interesting results showing that malnutrition is associated with increased sepsis, bloodstream infections, acute kidney injury, mortality, and in ICU survivors, readmission rates. So it’s been gratifying to see data supporting my hunch! I have questions regarding this comment. How does one gather a 90,000 patient database of critically ill patients?
This can’t be the work of one MD…I have trouble seeing that many admissions to one ICU within a reasonable period. Secondly it has already been proven that those conditions correlate with malnutrition so how do you term it a “hunch.”? You evaluated 90,000 patients for malnutrition using one protocol or just the outcomes using several protocols? Remember guidelines for assessment have changed over the years? I would think this would affect final results.