Nutritional Assessment

The Royal College of Physicians produced a useful booklet in 2002 entitled Nutrition and Patients: A Doctor’s Responsibility in which it states that “…all doctors should be able to diagnose and treat nutritional deficiencies” (page  ).

This site presents three ways in which nutritional status can be simply assessed:

• NICE Guidelines – Nutrition Support in Adults
  A screening tool developed by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in 2006 for both in-patients and out-patients
  
• Simple Dietary Assessment for Adults
  A simple six-question checklist devised by the author that will give a rough idea if your diet is likely to be adequate or not and is suitable for out-patients and the general public
  
• Risk Factors for Nutritional Deficiency
  A list of widely-recognised clinical risk factors for the development of nutritional deficiencies suitable for in-patients, out-patients and the general public

These three methods are screening tools which are suitable for different situations.  It will take a trained professional to interpret their exact significance for the person and if your health or answers to the questions in these three assessment tools give you cause to be concerned then you should seek the advice of your doctor or a registered dietitian or nutritional therapist