Nutrition Essay

Worksheet 18-1: Case Study—Assessment of the Nutritional Status of the Elderly

John, 78 years old, is a sometimes homeless veteran. He is missing many teeth from years of no dental care. John receives a monthly retirement check but he has great difficulty meeting his monthly bills, let alone buying enough food, and this has caused many evictions. When he can afford them, John has his prescriptions filled for a diuretic (for high blood pressure) and a statin (for high cholesterol). John isn’t sure what his current weight is, but he has had to tighten his belt to the last notch over the past eight months. He has no family that he is still in contact with and he eats all of his meals alone. At a neighbor’s insistence, John is visiting the local senior center to eat lunch for the first time. The day he visits, each person is having a free nutrition screen completed by a program staff member.

Questions:
1. Using the “Determine Your Nutritional Health” checklist (p. 464), assess John’s nutritional status. What is his score? 16

2. Review the second page of the DETERMINE checklist available at: http://www.aafp.org/PreBuilt/NSI_DETERMINE.pdf. Prioritize John’s nutrition problems based on this screening document. 1) Economic Hardship 2) Eating Poorly 3) Tooth Loss/Mouth Pain 4) Disease 5) Involuntary Weight Loss 6) Multiple Medication 7) Reduced Social Contact 8) Needs Assistance in Self Care 9) Elder Years Above Age 80

3. What parts of the nutrition education handout created to accompany the DETERMINE checklist (available at: http://www.aafp.org/PreBuilt/NSI_StrongAndHealthy.pdf) should be used to provide nutrition education to John?

4. According to the American Dietetic Association position statement “Nutrition Across the Spectrum of Aging” (available at: http://www.eatright.org/ada/files/Aging(2)np.pdf), what should