To prevent the spread of Covid-19, the CDC recommended that residents at nursing facilities have meals in their rooms and that they do not have visitors. This also included having family members and friends bring in food. This had been going on since mid-march 2020. What I didn’t realize was that there were some residents whose family members regularly brought in snacks. Thus, their supply dwindled and by the time the April weights came along we had a couple of individuals present with a significant loss. Upon speaking to the resident, family and nurse, it was discovered that is was an issue with snacks. As a result, we purchased a variety of snacks, similar to what the families might bring in. A snack cart goes around daily and the units are given extra snacks for requests at other times. I actually took a few a the residents a large zip lock bag of a variety of snacks. The look on the one resident’s face was priceless. So, this veteran dietitian learned that it’s best to assess any new “normal” to see how it might affect the residents overall health and well-being.
COVID-19: Troubleshooting issues with room isolation and restriction of visitors (part 1)
