Our Vision
Every individual receives safe, timely & appropriate nutritional care in every care setting, every day
BAPEN is a Charitable Association that raises awareness of malnutrition and works to advance the nutritional care of patients and those at risk from malnutrition in the wider community.
We work with our members and key national partners to ensure that all individuals who are malnourished, or at risk of malnutrition, in any healthcare or social setting are identified early through nutrition screening using a validated tool such as BAPEN’s “Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool” (‘MUST’) and receive appropriate, individualised treatment.
In order to achieve this, all health and social care professionals should be adequately trained to understand the importance of good nutritional care and have the skills appropriate to their role to implement this. Good nutrition and hydration care should be recognised as being a fundamental core component of providing safe and effective quality care in all care settings. One of our key challenges is making sure that the nutritional care individuals receive is seamless across the organisations who are involved in providing their care. Hence, the nutritional care delivered must meet an individual’s needs, irrespective of the care setting. This transfer of information for nutritional care between care homes, hospitals and community services is often poor and needs to be improved by the development of integrated nutrition pathways of care.
BAPEN is committed to ensuring that nutrition becomes everyone’s responsibility. Our Malnutrition Action Group launched the first national Malnutrition Self-Screening Tool, so that individuals and their carers can undertake this initial screening themselves (www.malnutritionselfscreening.org/self-screening.html). We are also working to improve the information available for patients and their carers.
We are also committed to ensuring that the best available clinical and scientific evidence is implemented in practice. BAPEN therefore develops reports, toolkits and guidance for health and social care professionals and commissioners.
The BAPEN Think Tank in June 2017 was used to formulate our vision and aims for the next five years. Since then we have consulted widely about the topic and we continue to welcome comments and suggestions on our activities. Comments and suggestions should be sent to secretary@bapen.org.uk.
