Abstract:
The purposes of this descriptive research were to explore, and the relationship of nutritional risk, nutritional care and clinical outcomes of patients with major surgery. The literature review was the conceptual framework for this study. The purposive sample consisted of 70 of the patients undergoing major surgery at Ramathibodi Hospital, Bangkok, Thailand in 2015. Data was collected by a data recording form and the Nutrition Alert Form. Nutritional risk was assessed at the admission, and nutritional care and clinical outcomes were recorded during admission in the hospital. The Data was analyzed by descriptive statistics and Spearman's Rank correlation.The results revealed that 24.3% of the sample group had nutritional risk and 7.1% had severe malnutrition. The early enteral nutrition was started at 1 to 112 hrs or 4.67 days after surgery. Most of the sample (92.9%) received early enteral nutrition (within 48 hours after surgery) and 97.1% of them attained a nutritional goal within 7 days. The median length of hospital stay was 4 days, mean 5.1 days. Postoperative infection was 2% and no one died. The score of Nutritional risk was not correlated with length of hospital stay (rs = .073, p > .05). Time to start enteral nutrition and time to attained nutritional goal were correlated with length of hospital stay (rs = .514, p < .01, rs = .740, p < .01, respectively). Surgical patients should be screened to find out the nutritional at risk and provide proper nutritional care for good clinical outcomes.