Nurses' knowledge about malnutrition in older people: A multicenter cross-sectional study

Abstract

Objectives: Malnutrition, among older people, has a prevalence of 22% in hospitals, 17.5% in nursing homes, and 8.7% in home care. Adequate knowledge among health care staff is necessary for risk identification and adequate intervention. The aim of this study was to translate and validate the Knowledge of Malnutrition-Geriatric (KoM-G) questionnaire in Italian and to investigate the malnutrition knowledge of registered nurses working in hospitals, nursing homes, home care, and palliative care in Italy.

Method: The KoM-G questionnaire was translated and validated in terms of content validity, internal consistency, and interrater reliability. Subsequently, a multicenter cross-sectional study in different settings was performed.

Results: The KoM-G ITA questionnaire showed excellent content validity, internal consistency, and good intrarater reliability. There were 511 nurses who completed the questionnaire. On average, 61.9% of the respondents answered the questions correctly.

Conclusion: The level of knowledge about malnutrition in nurses is adequate. Training courses and management protocols should be implemented to improve nursing care for malnourished older people.

Keywords: Knowledge; Malnutrition; Nursing; Nutritional status; Older people.