Protein calorie malnutrition increases patient morbidity and mortality risk. For this reason, assessment of nutritional status is an important component of good medical care. However, assessing patient nutritional status is difficult.
Subjective Global Assessment or SGA is a proven nutritional assessment tool that is highly predictive of nutrition-associated complications. SGA fulfills the requirements of a desirable system of nutritional assessment by:
Traditionally, nutritional assessment and risk have been based on a snapshot of Body Mass Index (BMI), serum proteins, weight, or the percentage change in food intake. However, a snapshot does not predict the future progression of nutrition deterioration, which determines the likelihood of developing complications. Many people cannot accurately remember weight, height, and exact dietary intake. SGA overcomes these limitations by evaluating a dimensionless progression of factors which can alter nutritional status. Thus it does not rely on patient memory or physical parameters which could be affected by non-nutritional factors to predict the future progression of nutritional status.
This instructional training class has been developed to teach health professionals this nutritional status assessment technique.
What will you learn in this course?
The Subjective Global Assessment Digital Training Class is divided into two sections. Section 1 describes the SGA nutritional assessment technique. It explains how the medical history component and the physical assessment findings interrelate to generate a nutritional status classification. After explaining the basic principles, the digital training class follows a trained clinician conducting the SGA assessment technique on four different patients:
Section 2 of this digital training class presents three different patients for the viewer to test their ability to classify patients using the SGA nutritional assessment technique.
Who should take this course?
A trained clinician: physician, nurse, dietitian or similar.