Abstract
Background & aims: People in hospital experience problems gaining access to food. We aimed to develop an experience-based measure of access to food.Methods: The 27-item questionnaire has five domains: feeling hungry, physical barriers, organisational barriers, food choice and food quality. A survey was implemented on 29 wards in four hospitals using both self-completion and interview administration formats.Results: Questionnaires were analysed for 764/1154 (66%) eligible participants. Values for Cronbach's alpha were: feeling hungry 0.886; physical barriers 0.809; organisational barriers 0.632; food choice 0.414; and food quality 0.738. The proportions of compromised patients in each domain were: hunger 30%; physical barriers 24%; organisational barriers 29%: food choice 24%: and food quality 21%. Poor self-rated health was associated with increased problems from feeling hungry (adjusted odds ratio 2.39, 95% confidence interval 1.10-5.18); older age was associated with increased difficulties with physical problems (2.67, 1.31-5.42) as were admission to a stroke ward (16.8, 5.09-55.3) or elderly care ward (3.50. 1.08-11.40). Problems with food access varied between hospitals and wards.Conclusions: We have developed a reliable and valid questionnaire measure of hospital food access. The measure reveals widespread problems of food access in hospital. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd and European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism. All rights reserved.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 625 - 630 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | CLINICAL NUTRITION |
Volume | 28 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Dec 2009 |