President's Message
Dr Simon Gabe, BAPEN President
Welcome to 2018! We were thrilled to see so many of you at our Annual Conference in Birmingham last year and were pleased to unveil our new 5-year Strategy there. As 2017 was our 25th Anniversary, it gave us a good opportunity to reflect on our achievements and our ambitions for the years ahead with regard to patient care, professional support, policy and public awareness, as well as membership benefits! If you would like to read more about our strategy you can download it from our website.
APPG Hunger report
On Monday 22nd January I was invited to appear on BBC Breakfast to discuss the new report from the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Hunger, ‘Hidden hunger and malnutrition in the elderly’, which contained a pleasing call to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to push for universal use of the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (‘MUST’). The report acknowledged the good take up of ‘MUST’ in secondary care and increasing (if patchy) use in care homes, but flagged that there is significant work to do in the community to screen for undernutrition.
I was interviewed alongside Sarah Wren, from the Hertfordshire Independent Living Service (HILS), by BBC reporter John Maguire. It was good to have a chance to talk about why ‘MUST’ is so important, and also to acknowledge the importance of the Malnutrition Self-Screening Tool as well. It was great to see lots of passionate engagement and discussion on social media afterwards!
Both Sarah and I talked about the need for greater awareness and access to information for elderly people and those who care for them, and particularly about the need for nuanced messaging when it comes to what constitutes ‘healthy eating’ for different age groups, both those at risk of disease-related malnutrition and those at risk because of social or environmental causes, such as loneliness. Of course, loneliness has also been in the news because of the Government’s recent appointment of a Minister for Loneliness, Tracey Crouch MP. We will be watching that space with interest!
Nutritional Care Tool Data Collection Week
The BAPEN Nutritional Care Tool provides a unique opportunity for the clinical nutrition community to collate and publish national level data. Our next data collection week falls on 12th – 18th March and we need your help! We aim to collect data regarding:
- Approaches to organising nutritional care at an organisational level with the proportion of Trusts with a nutrition steering committee and nutrition support team in place, with levels of specialist nutrition nurses;
- Nutritional screening, the quality of nutritional care, patient experience and the tracking of changes in a patient’s weight over time.
The Data Collection Week happily coincides with Nutrition and Hydration Week so it is a good week to focus on helping us achieve our ambitions. If we can work together to ensure that every single acute trust is registered, this will provide us with a powerful 2018 data set which will illustrate improvement and detail the levels of improvement still required.
If you need convincing about the importance of the information provided, read the 2017 report which catalogues evidence from the 70 organisations that took part. If you want to get involved but need more information we have plenty of resources, including a five-step guide on how to do it on our website.
Hot off the press!
In exciting news from ASPEN, in January, BAPEN Council member Trevor Smith was awarded the 2018 International Abstract of Distinction! Trevor and his team received this award for their work on the use of oral nutritional supplements in malnourished older people. Congratulations Trevor!
Dates for your diary
So, what’s coming up this year? The ESPEN Annual Congress is 1st-4th September in Madrid, and very importantly the date has been set for our own Annual Conference on 20th and 21st November. This year we will be in beautiful Harrogate. See you there! Do take a look at the Diary Dates section at the end of each issue of InTouch for a full schedule of key dates for your diary.
Return to top