Malnutrition affects one in four acute hospital admissions and one in three admitted to care homes. While many clinical staff may fail to recognise the signs of malnutrition, the use of screening tools such as ‘MUST’ are used in both hospital and community settings. With greater identification of those at risk of malnutrition comes the responsibility of managing these individuals. This article presents the launch of the BAPEN decision trees that are designed to help healthcare professionals manage malnutrition.

Acknowledgements:
The authors wish to thank the members of the Education and Training committee of BAPEN for their creation of the structure and format of the decision trees, and for initial reviews. The core and associate groups of BAPEN have provided great input to the committee and decision tree creation. Finally Mr Pete Turner, Senior Dietitian, Royal Liverpool University Hospital, for reviewing the re-feeding decision tree.

Re-feeding decision tree kindly reproduced with permission from BAPEN.

Dr Sheldon Cooper MSc MD MRCP RNutr, BAPEN Executive officer and Chair of Education and Training Committee, Consultant Gastroenterologist and Nutrition Lead, Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust
Anne Holdoway BSc RD MBDA, Specialist Dietitian and Chair of the Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition Group of the British Dietetic Association.

Article accepted for publication: January 2013