White paper: Malnutrition: the role of secondary care

There is a growing divide in experiences of ageing, with the poorest people living shorter lives and spending more years in bad health. Many older people will not live longer lives in good health because of poor nutrition. As one third of older patients are already malnourished or at risk of malnutrition when they are admitted to hospital, secondary care physicians are well placed to effectively identify and treat malnutrition in this patient group. In the hospital setting, it is mostly dieticians who manage malnutrition, but there are only around 11,000 registered dieticians in the UK. It is important, therefore,