Nutrition services for adults

We treat patients who have nutritional problems, or need nutrition support as part of their overall condition.

Our services

You can find out more details about the services we provide:

The Freeman Hospital has also been designated as the only centre in the North East for intestinal failure. This is a condition which may need very specialised surgery.

Malnutrition screening

All patients should be screened for malnutrition when they are admitted to hospital and in most hospital clinics.

To screen patients, we use a tool called ‘MUST’ (Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool). This involves patients being weighed and answering questions about unintentional weight loss.

You can find out more about MUST on the British Association for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (BAPEN) website.

BAPEN website

If a patient is thought to be at risk of malnutrition, there are different ways to tackle this. It could include using nutritional supplements, monitoring of food and fluid charts, regular weighing, and possibly referral for specialist dietetic advice.

MUST screening is repeated every week that patients are in hospital.

Reducing time in hospital

Patients may have malnutrition for one of a number of reasons. They may have an underlying medical problem, or they could be about to have, or recovering from, an operation.

Preventing and treating malnutrition reduces how long patients need to spend in hospital, and helps to save lives.

Enteral nutrition service

The Enteral Nutrition Service works with patients to make sure they can receive the nutrition they need, even if they can’t eat and drink enough.

We work closely with healthcare staff throughout our hospitals to provide the most appropriate feeding treatment for patients.

Conditions we treat

The main conditions we treat include:

Inflammatory bowel disease for example Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis
Failure to fully absorb nutrients (malabsorption)
Food intolerances
Malnutrition related to other diseases.

Specialist dietitians work closely with gastroenterologists to provide personalised nutrition support advice to a range of patients. We make sure that we clearly discuss plans for treatment with the patients, family and carers.

We use specially-designed food and drink supplements to help patients take in the right level of nutrition they need. We also use other ways to feed patients with specially-designed food: