Validation of the instrument to determine hospital undernutrition in adults and its correlation with institutional factors

Abstract

Introduction: Hospital undernutrition has been considered as a problem global public health with economic, social, political and ethical implications. Several international studies show a 40% prevalence of malnutrition hospitable. Objective: To validate the instruments to determine the prevalence of Malnutrition in hospitalized adult patients and its relationship with institutional factors. Materials and Methods: It corresponds to a mixed, prospective, field investigation, of cross-sectional, descriptive and correlational. A pilot test was used to establish the validity, relevance and coherence and thus obtain the degree of reliability of the instruments designed, both quantitative and qualitative, which were validated by judgment of 15 experts. For the quantitative instrument, a study guide was used where collected information from the medical records of 20 patients and in turn 20 were surveyed health professionals working in the hospital. For the qualitative instrument, randomly selected 3 patients diagnosed with undernutrition. Results: For the quantitative instrument, a reliability score of 88.86 is obtained, with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.89. The reliability of the qualitative instrument was 98.4, since either for the job performance factor, the fitness factor and the support factor family. In the pilot test, a prevalence of 50%-75% of malnutrition was determined hospitable. Arterial hypertension was the most common pathology associated with patients diagnosed with undernutrition, with a prevalence greater than 85%. Likewise, if correlated the nutritional diagnosis with the hospital stay and it is observed that those patients with a diagnosis of malnutrition have a hospital stay longer compared to those with adequate nutritional status. In the results of the qualitative instrument, the emotional state of the patient was evaluated with undernutrition, observing testimonies with diagnoses of anxiety, stress or depression.  Conclusion: The instruments, both quantitative and qualitative, have been approved by its reliability and validity, being suitable to be applied to the sample that represents this investigation. The results obtained in the pilot plan are closely related to those observed in national and international investigations on the same topic of study, highlighting hospital malnutrition as a global health problem public.