Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Revised 2017 Standards of Practice in Nutrition Care and Standards of Professional Performance for Registered Dietitian Nutritionists

Abstract

Registered dietitian nutritionists (RDNs) face complex situations every day. Competently addressing the unique needs of each situation and applying standards appropriately are essential to providing safe, timely, patient-/client-/customer-centered, quality nutrition and dietetics care and services. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (Academy) leads the profession by developing standards that can be used by RDNs (who are credentialed by the Commission on Dietetic Registration) for self-evaluation to assess quality of practice and performance. The Standards of Practice reflect the Nutrition Care Process and workflow elements as a method to manage nutrition care activities with patients/clients/populations that include nutrition screening, nutrition assessment, nutrition diagnosis, nutrition intervention/plan of care, nutrition monitoring and evaluation, and discharge planning and transitions of care. The Standards of Professional Performance consist of six domains of professional performance: Quality in Practice, Competence and Accountability, Provision of Services, Application of Research, Communication and Application of Knowledge, and Utilization and Management of Resources. Within each standard, specific indicators provide measurable action statements that illustrate how the standard can be applied to practice. The Academy's Revised 2017 Standards of Practice and Standards of Professional Performance for RDNs, along with the Academy's Code of Ethics and the Revised 2017 Scope of Practice for the RDN, provide minimum standards and tools for demonstrating competence and safe practice and are used collectively to gauge and guide an RDN's performance in nutrition and dietetics practice.

Hospital nurses and home care providers’ experiences of participation in nutritional care among older persons and their family caregivers: a qualitative study

“…how and when food is served and what to eat) . Person‐centred care (PCC) has been a priority for healthcare policy and professional practice worldwide for many years and is emphasised as being important in the management of malnutrition in older persons . A feature of PCC is health care that places the person in the centre of care with consideration of the person’s context, history and family.…”

“…However, moving from rhetoric about person‐centred nutritional care in research reports, guidelines and policy documents to actually implementing it in practice appears to be challenging . Despite the considerable interest shown in person‐centred nutritional care for older persons in recent years , delivery of the care still often lack consideration for the older person’s needs and preferences . Problems such as poor communication of nutritional information , insufficient knowledge about older person’s nutritional needs and lack of attention to their nutritional problems have been described .…”

Multidisciplinary Nutrition Care: Benefitting Patients with Malnutrition Across Healthcare Sectors

“…Dietitians in many countries of the world have been trained to complete a comprehensive, individualized nutrition assessment to detect malnutrition and counsel patients [14] on nutritional means for mitigating malnutrition (e.g., low-dose vitamin pills, oral nutritional supplements (ONS), diet enhancements, diet modifications, etc. ), as well as other strategies to support nutritional status (e.g., the use of adapted utensils, grocery delivery, etc.).…”

Impact of Nutrition Care Process Documentation in Obese Children and Adolescents with Metabolic Syndrome and/or Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

“…The main purpose of this process is to give each dietitian a consistent and systematic structure that enables them to think critically and make decisions based on their conclusions. After developing the NCP, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics developed a new format for dietitian documentation to document the NCP steps; this new format is abbreviated ADIME [6].…”