FIU Discovery

It is standard practice in acute-care settings to screen patients upon admission to determine whether they need a nutritional assessment; however, there is limited information on the ability of the screening tools to detect patients at nutritional risk. The purpose of this study was to determine (1) the sensitivity and specificity of the screening tool used at Jackson Memorial Hospital and (2) whether a new proposed tool would be more sensitive and specific. Dietitians screened patients upon admission using the existing and proposed tools (n=141). Sensitivity and specificity of these tools in identifying patients at nutritional risk was calculated. Mantel-Haenszel chi-square statistics were used to identify indicators correlated with nutritional risk. A revised tool was tested and found to have a higher sensitivity than the existing tool but lower specificity. Odds ratios indicated that the revised tool had a higher degree of association with nutritional risk than the existing one.