In Qld a working group was formed to review the evidence and guidelines to develop a recommendation for best practice food service models in Mental Health settings.
A survey of the group was conducted to identify current processes and challenges in this setting. Additionally, the literature was reviewed and findings summarised to help inform what is best practice food service in mental health. Limited evidence was identified and search expanded to include other longer stay populations including residential aged care and rehabilitation.
The challenges identified by the working group were the wide spectrum of dietary needs, high rates of default meals, low patient satisfaction and no validated way to measure satisfaction in this population as well as limited FTE to undertake improvement activities. The working group also shared examples from their systems of what is working well in their facilities and enablers to the success. From the literature search, 12 papers were identified as relevant to the research question. Nine relating to mental health, five of these in inpatient populations, two community and two literature reviews. The remaining three papers were related to food service in other long stay settings.
After reviewing the results, the working group developed a set of recommendations to incorporate into best practice guidelines and menu standards to facilitate best practice food services in mental health. This presentation will outline the journey to reach the recommendations and highlight some examples of mental health unit food service models of care in practice.