Comparison of Perception of the Neutropenic Diet between Nurses and Patients

Mi-ae Kim; Ihn Sook Jeong

doi:10.5388/aon.2012.12.4.331

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Kim and Jeong: Comparison of Perception of the Neutropenic Diet between Nurses and Patients

Original Article

Asian Oncology Nursing

Asian Oncology Nursing 2012; 12(4): 331-338.

Published online: 31 December 2012

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5388/aon.2012.12.4.331

Comparison of Perception of the Neutropenic Diet between Nurses and Patients

Mi-ae Kim¹, Ihn Sook Jeong²

¹Department of Nursing, Pusan National University Hospital, Busan, Korea.

²Pusan National University College of Nursing, Busan, Korea.

Address reprint requests to: Kim, Mi-ae. Department of Nursing, Pusan National University Hospital, 179 Gudeok-ro, Seo-gu, Busan 602-739, Korea. Tel: +82-10-5357-7672, Fax: +82-51-240-7989, davidesder@hanmail.net

Received 6 November 2012 Accepted 25 December 2012

(open-access):

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Purpose

This descriptive study aimed to compare the perception of the acceptable foods for the neutropenic diet between nurses and patients by food type.

Methods

The participants were 225 nurses working at chemotherapy wards and 71 patients in chemotherapy treatment. Data were collected with a self-administered questionnaire from January 2 to February 24, 2012, and analyzed with SPSS 12.0 program using descriptive statistics and the χ²-test.

Results

Eighty-eight point eight percent of nurses and 76.1% of cancer patients thought the patients needed the neutropenic diets. The most important decisional criteria to determine dietary restriction was neutrophil count for nurses and food type for patients. The two groups showed significantly different allowance to raw fruits and raw vegetables, sterilized canned juice, fried vegetables, yogurt, uncooked tofu, salted fish, cooked fish, cooked shellfish, uncooked grain powder, jellified food, home-made bread/cookies, nuts including peanuts, instant coffee or tea and tea brewed. In general, patients were more permissive about the neutropenic diet than nurses.

Conclusion

It is recommended to consider patients' preference as well as nurses' professional knowledge and publish standardized clinical diet guidelines for neutropenic patients with collaboration between nurses and patient representatives.

Keywords: Neutropenia, Diet, Perception

Figures and Tables

Fig. 1

Decisional criteria to determine dietary restriction between nurses and patients.

Fig. 2

Percent of allowed to eat by cooking type between nurses and patients.

Table 1

Comparison of perception to allow fruits, vegetables and dairy products for neutropenic patients between nurses and patients (N=225)

Table 2

Comparison of perception to allow meats, meat substitutes and meal substittes for neutropenic patients between nurses and patients (N=225)

^*Calculated by Fisher's exact test.

Table 3

Comparison of perception to allow snakes and drinks for neutropenic patients between nurses and patients (N=225)

Notes

This article is an addition based on the first author's master's thesis from Pusan National University.

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