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Maintaining adequate hydration in patients is an essential part of good nursing care. Now a toolkit is being published to encourage nurses to help patients drink up. Here we publish a summary
SUMMARY
As part of the Nutrition Now campaign, a toolkit is being launched online to encourage nurses and support staff to increase water consumption among patients in hospital settings.
Keywords
* Water * Hydration * Dehydration * Fluid balance charts * Nutrition * Patient safety * Mealtimes
How much should we drink each day? What percentage of our body weight is made up of water? These are questions the RCN hopes will become a daily focus for all nurses.
This week, as part of our joint Nutrition Now campaign, the RCN and the National Patient Safety Agency are publishing a toolkit to help nurses, carers and support staff increase water consumption among patients in hospitals and other healthcare settings. It has been developed with nurses, patient groups and stakeholders including Water UK. Here are its key messages.
Water is essential to health and is one of the SIX basic nutrients - along with carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, proteins and minerals - but is often overlooked. This can result in vulnerable people missing out on the support and guidance they need to help maintain a healthy level of hydration.
Medical evidence shows that good hydration can assist in the management of diabetes and help prevent pressure ulcers, constipation, urinary tract infections (UTIs), incontinence, kidney stones, heart disease, high blood pressure, cognitive impairment, falls, poor oral health, skin conditions and many other illnesses. Encouraging patients to drink fresh water also makes good economic sense. Better hydration improves wellbeing, reduces the incidence of some of the more common ailments and can therefore cut the volume of medicines required. Remaining medicines also work more effectively when patients are properly hydrated.
Adequate hydration can also take away many hours of extra care time associated with illnesses and remove some of the higher cost professional involvement needed to prescribe and administer treatment. While drinking more water may encourage patients to go to the toilet more often, investment in staff time can be regained through patients achieving a healthy toilet function, fewer soiling incidents, prevention of UTIs, and less need...