Therapeutic diets, nutritional assessment, enteral and parenteral nutrition.
A malnourished patient can look well-nourished on paper if you skip the right screening tool. Knowing which tool to use — and when — changes outcomes before a single calorie is ordered.
A client's albumin is 3.0 g/dL but they were admitted yesterday — does that actually tell you about their nutrition? The answer changes everything about your assessment.
A client refuses the hospital meal tray and you document "noncompliant with diet." But the real problem isn't the client — it's the meal plan that ignored their beliefs.
A client eats a "healthy" fruit smoothie and their blood glucose spikes to 280 mg/dL. The issue isn't what they ate — it's how much and when. Carbohydrate management is the centerpiece of diabetic nutrition.
A patient with chronic kidney disease eats a banana and a glass of orange juice — and hours later develops a life-threatening cardiac dysrhythmia. The renal diet exists to prevent exactly this.
A stroke patient coughs every time they drink water but tolerates pudding fine. The texture you select next could prevent aspiration pneumonia — or cause it.
The client recovering from an MI asks why their hospital tray has no salt packets and includes oatmeal instead of eggs — your explanation connects diet directly to survival.
A post-op bowel resection patient is tolerating clear liquids — but advancing the diet too fast or choosing the wrong progression can trigger dangerous complications. Knowing the GI diet ladder saves your patient.
A PEG tube site that looks red and crusty might be normal healing — or the start of a buried bumper. Knowing the difference protects the patient from a surgical emergency.
Your tube-fed patient suddenly develops cramping, distension, and a residual volume of 350 mL. Your next action determines whether they aspirate or recover — do you know the threshold?
TPN bypasses the entire GI tract and delivers nutrition directly into the bloodstream — but the wrong dextrose concentration in the wrong line can be fatal. Do you know which access is required and why?
An NG tube that looks correctly placed can still be sitting in a lung. The verification method you choose — and the one you skip — can mean the difference between feeding and aspiration pneumonia.