Undernäring hos äldre- ett gemensamt ansvar : Sjuksköterskans erfarenheter av team-samverkan kring den äldre patientens nutritionsbehov inom äldreboende

Sammanfattning: Purpose: The purpose of this interview study was to describe the nurses’ view of their experiences of interaction with other professionals to improve the elderly patient's nutritional status in municipal elderly care. Method: The study is based on qualitative interviews with nine nurses and was analyzed according to a qualitative content analysis method. Results: The main themes that emerged: Communication among the involved, To feel secure in their role, Lack of structure. The nurses worked closely with nursing staff and cooperated more with doctors about nutrition than with the physiotherapist and occupational therapist. The nurses felt they had the main responsibility for maintaining a good nutritional status of the elderly patient and described themselves as primarily responsible for nutrition while they lacked nutritional competence equal to the responsibilities they had during the whole nutrition process. The nurses had no community dietitian’s skills and felt that the dietitian had a great responsibility and the most updated knowledge in diet and nutrition. The results showed a lack of routine, structure and clearly defined responsibilities of different professional groups. Conclusions: A multidisciplinary approach is a successful method tackling malnutrition in older people. All the professionals at various levels have a common responsibility, and shall cooperate to provide the elderly patient a good nutritional care. Nurses have a key role but needs to develop collaboration with other professionals. Collaboration with dieticians should be increased. The dietician's role and competence are important to achieve a good quality of nutrition and needed to complete the nurses’ competence. To improve the elderly patient nutritional status we need to have a clear definition of the responsibilities for each professional group.