Supplementing the normal hospital diet with fortified and unfortified snacks Available to Purchase

This paper sets out to describe a patient feeding intervention designed by a trust dietitian and a contract catering dietitian. Recent findings have indicated that many hospital patients are admitted to hospital in a malnourished state and that a greater percentage are discharged in a malnourished state. Clearly there is inadequate consumption of energy and protein by many hospital patients. The reasons are numerous but the outcome is disheartening. Something must be done to improve the consumption of food in hospitals. During the trial several simple incidents arose which challenged our intervention. This paper provides a simple method of increasing energy and protein intake and practical information regarding the challenges of this trial.