Guest Blogger Kyle Hampson
By Kyle Hampson, PharmD, Children’s Mercy Hospital and Clinics
Kansas City, Missouri
The Rhoads Lecture and Awards Ceremony at CNW15 began with some wonderful singing from A.S.P.E.N.’s CEO, Debra BenAvram (maybe she’ll do an encore performance at CNW16?), the presentation of the Vars award (congratulations to all of the candidates and our winner, Dr. David W. Lim), and some words from the president of the Rhoads Research Foundation, Dr. Charles Van Way. A.S.P.E.N.’s president Dr. Daniel Teitelbaum introduced the speaker for the Rhoads lecture, Dr. Dan Linetzky Waitzberg from the University of Sao Paulo School of Medicine in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Dr. Waitzberg’s presentation, High Quality Nutritional Care: The Brazilian Experience, chronicled many of the research projects that he and his team have worked on throughout his career. While my intention is not to reiterate the numerous studies presented, I do need to bring to light the large variety in study topics that Dr. Waitzberg has investigated. The work he presented spanned topics like nutrition assessment, bioimpedence, short bowel syndrome, and home parenteral nutrition. Because his work covers so many different areas, it really made it apparent to me how all of the different areas in nutrition support are connected. Improvements in one area can help us to perform better in another area of practice. By investigating a variety of different topics, Dr. Waitzberg and his team were able to impact nutrition care in many different areas.
Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, one message that can be taken away from Dr. Waitzberg’s lecture pertains to the interest of the government in nutrition support. The Brazilian government, through the Ministry of Health, developed a task force that worked with the Brazilian Society (SBNPE) to establish practice standards for parenteral and enteral nutrition. Through these efforts, there are now mandated nutrition support teams that provide nutrition care, screening, and education.
In the era of cost containment and healthcare reform, this made me wonder if instead of focusing on reducing expensive therapies for the sake of savings, should we be focused on things that simultaneously improve patient care and have cost-prevention benefit? By providing safer systems for nutrition delivery, optimizing micronutrient status, and reducing malnutrition in our patients, we could reduce the cost of healthcare through reduction in length of stay and reducing the cost of nutrition-related errors. This has been investigated by Dr. Waitzberg and his colleagues with favorable results, which gives me hope that we may have similar findings in the U.S.
Finally, I need to mention the take-home message of Dr. Waitzberg’s talk: the importance education and translating knowledge into clinical skills. I think that this is an essential component of advancing the practice of clinical nutrition. As nutrition support practitioners, we need to continue to educate our colleagues about the impact of nutritional status on outcomes, during the hospital admission and beyond. Especially in adult practice, it is easy for nutrition to be placed on the back burner. By advocating for our patients and letting the importance of nutrition be known to the medical team, we can help spark interest in our colleagues, which will hopefully lead to more education and an improvement in their clinical skills.
The Brazilian experience in providing world-class nutrition care has been a culmination of research, innovation, and practice. Through his efforts, Dr. Waitzberg has been an instrumental part of the advancement of nutrition support therapy in his country and abroad. I, along with the hundreds of others who attended his talk, thank him for sharing his thoughts with us at CNW15.
Access the CNW15 Rhoads Lecture online at www.nutritioncare.org/eLearning to see what you missed.
The views expressed in this post are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of A.S.P.E.N.
Good nutrition practice leads to better health conditions of the citizens thus improving the performance and work output in different sector. For success in the countries economy, nutrition practice need to be given the highest priority .