14.1 Nutrition Introduction

Nurses promote healthy nutrition to prevent disease, assist clients to recover from illness and surgery, and teach clients how to optimally manage chronic illness with healthy food choices. Healthy nutrition helps to prevent obesity and chronic diseases, such as diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease. By proactively encouraging healthy eating habits, nurses provide the tools for clients to maintain their health, knowing it is easier to stay healthy than to become healthy after disease sets in. When clients are recovering from illness or surgery, nurses use strategies to promote good nutrition even when a client has a poor appetite or nausea. If a client develops chronic disease, the nurse provides education about prescribed diets that can help manage the disease, such as a low carbohydrate diet for clients with diabetes or a low fat, low salt, low cholesterol diet for clients with cardiovascular disease.

Nurses also advocate for clients with conditions that can cause nutritional deficits. For example, a nurse may be the first to notice that a client is having difficulty swallowing at mealtime and advocates for a swallow study to prevent aspiration. A nurse may also notice other psychosocial risk factors that place a client at risk for poor nutrition in their home environment and make appropriate referrals to enhance their nutritional status. Nurses also administer alternative forms of nutrition, such as enteral (tube) feedings or parenteral (intravenous) feedings.

This chapter will review basic information about the digestive system, essential nutrients, nutritional guidelines, and then discuss the application of the nursing process to address clients’ nutritional status.