The role of the dietician in cancer care
Photograph taken from Unsplash
The main objective of this project is to explore and deepen the understanding of the role and approach of the dietitian in personalised nutritional therapy in cancer care.
Description
Nutritional therapy is an important part of the treatment of malnutrition or the risk of malnutrition in patients with cancer. Individualised nutritional therapy in cancer, where the dietetic profession is usually the main provider, has been shown to have an effect on quality of life, energy intake and weight. However, there are few studies that focus on how the dietitian should perform this nutritional therapy to achieve the best results and how it should be evaluated. In addition, simple and clinically useful measurement methods need to be available to be used as part of a goal-setting strategy, and to evaluate the effect of the nutritional treatment as a whole.
In this project, we will investigate how dietitians talk to patients about goal setting and which behavioural change strategies are used. Furthermore, we will look at whether simple anthropometric measures can be used to evaluate nutritional treatment and explore how the challenges experienced by the patient in the form of nutritional problems affect nutrition-related quality of life.