The Hospital’s Role

What you eat has a great impact on how well you are, particularly if you have underlying health problems.

The Royal Free has a team of dieticians to help patients with their diet.

Dieticians are experts in diet and nutrition. They give practical advice on how to change a diet to meet health needs and, in NHS hospitals, they design dietary plans and hospital food to help rehabilitate patients to full strength.

One of the Royal Free’s dieticians has made the following comments regarding working with renal patients:

“As a renal dietitian you work with patients who are both acutely and chronically unwell; they might have acute kidney injury or be on long-term dialysis. Generally as a dietitian you are trying to minimise the negative effects that diet could be having on a patient’s health. For instance if a patient has chronic kidney disease they would have specific dietary needs in terms of restricting certain minerals, such as potassium, phosphate and monitoring their intake of salt.

With acutely unwell patients on the wards, we work to make sure their individual nutritional requirements are met, in order to help them get better as soon as possible. Good nutrition helps with wound healing and maintenance of muscle strength.”

The Royal Free Nutrition and Dietetics section of their website is available by clicking the following link:

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