Abstract

Objective: Malnutrition is a common problem among hospitalized patients. The problem is worse in patients under intensive care units. This study evaluated the effectiveness of nutritional care training in intensive care units and its effects on patients. Methods: In the interventional study with parallel design 60 patients (30 in each group) of ICU were selected by available sampling amongst 104 hospitalized patients according to input/output criteria. The intervention was designed according to the Nutritional Care Guidelines of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN) and the American Association of Critical-care Nurses (AACN) then the nurses of the mentioned wards were trained for one month (4 one-hour sessions). The pre and post-intervention nutritional status of the patients were assessed using a checklist previously has ordered by the Ministry of Health (IR, Iran) to be applied in the patients. Both groups were homogeneous, and the collected data were analyzed applying the Kolmogo-rov-Smirnov, Mann-Whitney-U, and Friedman test using SPSS software ver19. Results: There were no significant differences between the groups in terms of age, sex, body weight, APACHE score, admission/hospitalization, alcohol consumption, smoking, history of hospitalization, marital status, type of insurance, and surgery (p<0.05). Results showed a significant reduction of nausea (p=0.001), vomiting (p=0.0001), constipation (p=0.002), diarrhea (p=0.004) but no significant in body weight gain and aspiration rate (p<0.05). Conclusion: Regarding the importance of nutrition and its effect on improving patients' condition, it is more highlighted that cohering to standard nutrition principles then continuous training of the nurses can lead to better patient outcomes.