Fatores que dificultam a alimentação por via oral do idoso hospitalizado

Abstract

It aims to identify the factors that make it difficult the oral feeding in hospitalized elderly patients. This is a quantitative research with cross-sectional design, developed with 111 elderly hospitalized in a hospital located south of Rio Grande do Sul. For data collection it was used an instrument called Food Rating Scale for the Elderly Hospitalized. A factorial and descriptive analysis was performed. The quantitative data produced were scanned and organized in the software Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, version 20.0. It was identified four factors related to the difficulty at oral feeding by the hospitalized elderly: environmental factors, eating, physiological and the ones related to the health team. Environmental factors stood out as those that cause the oral feeding to be more difficult in hospitalized elderly patients, specifically the items that include pain, depression and the use/action of drugs.