Feeds, food tasting and hand-washing

On the M40, May 2012. No, I have no idea.

Back at work to a three day week after a ten day holiday was challenging last week, and demanded all the prioritisation skills I have. My colleagues dealt with the urgent referrals on my wards while I was away, but there were plenty of non-urgent cases, and other colleagues were away when I was back at work, and I had to reciprocate and cover their urgent referrals. Added to that, I had a food tasting session, a department meeting and compulsory training on hand-washing to squeeze into those three days.

So I prioritised the tube-fed people - those who can manage to eat just had to get along somehow until I could get round to them. And, of course, they were all slightly 'interesting' cases that needed extra time and attention, rather than the quick, straightforward, 'just calculate the total requirement and divide by the number of hours the feed is delivered' cases.

There was one whose feed rate had been reduced to a bare minimum because of unpleasant side effects, so I had to try and consider how to tweak the feed schedule to meet the patient's nutritional requirements. Another was a patient who was frail and elderly, and one of the reasons for admission was because he'd stopped eating - in this case, the purpose of artificial nutrition has to be clarified, because the patient was not suitable for a permanent PEG tube but wouldn't be able to go back to the nursing home with an NG tube. This is one of the worst possible situations - do we allow the patient to remain on the ward indefinitely just so that he can be fed? If not, what is the alternative? Ultimately it's the doctor's decision, but my job to raise the issue to try to ensure that a decision is made.

Another patient had received a trauma injury and had come from Intensive Care where they had placed an oro-gastric tube, which is an alternative when the naso-gastric route is not appropriate - but the tube had come out and nobody on the ward quite knew whether another oro-gastric tube was needed (which would have to be put in place by a doctor) or whether an NG tube would do (which could be placed by a suitably-qualified nurse). Then just as I thought it was all over, there seemed to be another new NG feed schedule needed, except when I got to the ward there was no NG tube in place and some confusion about whether one was needed or not. I didn't hang around to find out - if they'd decided to go ahead there were options they could implement for the weekend and I could re-visit the patient on Monday.

The food-tasting happens about four times a year, and had been scheduled by the hospital Catering department before the Bank Holiday had been moved. This is probably why it had ended up in a three-day week, and that was why only three of us turned up: me, the manager of the Dietetic service, and a member of the lay panel that represents the interests of patients. We were outnumbered by the catering staff hosting the tasting session.

There being no such thing as a free lunch, our job was to rate all the available foodstuffs by appearance, smell, texture, taste, temperature, and anything else we could think of. All the day's standard main course menu items were there, plus a few extras: a 'fork-mashable' option, two from the 'ethnic' menu, one of the 'Lite bites' that are available outside regular mealtimes, plus a couple of puddings. Served at the perfect temperature in this calm, controlled setting, all the meals were pretty good, with a couple of really outstanding options and a couple that were just OK. Served in the normal overworked ward environment, where they may have been heated up for too long or not long enough, and may take a little while to actually reach the patient, I imagine some options may in reality be less attractive.

The compulsory hand-washing training was fairly straightforward, except that I refused to have the UV-fluorescent liquid applied thanks to its paraben content. So the infection control nurse just watched me washing my hands. And he was delighted when it turned out that we had their missing UV light box, which had been loaned to our department and then forgotten about to the extent that they'd given it up as lost.

With my holiday just a dim and distant memory, so the week ended. Some time has passed without me managing to get this blog updated, and much has happened - Sister D celebrated her silver wedding anniversary, Mr A is spending three weeks on 'work experience' in Manchester, and all my wards were swapped for different ones. More to come as soon as I can manage it.