Sophie Murray, head of nutrition and hydration for Sunrise Senior Living UK and Gracewell Healthcare, considers the problem of dehydration and provides tips on how to ensure care home residents are encouraged to drink more in order to avoid it
Hydration and nutrition are essential components for maintaining good health. They are also areas that feature prominently in care home inspections. Ensuring that residents are well hydrated and well nourished is important and can provide an opportunity for them to interact with others, as well as enhancing quality of life. There are also various policies, protocols, procedures, screening tools, training and practice tips that can support and improve hydration in care home residents.
Dehydration is a serious issue in the healthcare sector, particularly in care homes. A patient safety study on dehydration highlighted that there is a 30 per cent greater risk of dehydration in those over the age of 65 years. A report by the Hydration for Health Initiative in 2012 indicated that between 50 per cent and 92 per cent of nursing home residents have inadequate fluid intakes. According to another report, one-quarter of all cases of care home residents being admitted to hospital are due to dehydration.1
Currently, there are no official figures available to show the hydration status of the general population. This may partly be due to the lack of a universal measurement tool, such as the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) which is used to measure nutritional status.
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