Recovering from any surgery or illness, no matter how minor, is a complex and difficult process. After the procedure has been completed, the patient faces a long period of recovery on the journey back to full health. Adequate nutrition delivered through quality healthcare catering services plays a key role in this process, but many patients will struggle with their relationship with food during this time.
After all – when you’re hurting, a nutritious serving of meat and three vegetables isn’t half as appealing as a packet of chocolate biscuits.
Tools like mindful eating can be a valuable way of helping a patient rebuild that bridge and work towards dietary normality while they’re in professional care. When combined with fresh, delicious, and nutritious meals, mindful eating can help a struggling patient back to their feet and onto the road to recovery.
Paging the brigade de cuisine
Improving the dining experience in healthcare is an important goal with a number of challenges. Often, the issue is staffing; in a hospital dedicated to saving lives and restoring health, the administration will naturally focus more on attracting leading doctors, nurses, and technicians rather than sifting through qualified chefs. While these staff are brilliantly qualified at providing acute care, their experience rarely extends to providing dietetically assessed meals designed to support recovery.
Cater Care’s experience with providing nourishing and attentive services to our residents makes us the ideal fit for healthcare providers looking to enhance their healthcare catering services. Our qualified chefs, cooks, and catering assistants can help take the load off healthcare provider’s shoulders and let them do their best work, while doctors can rest easy knowing their patients are enjoying meals designed by expert dietitians to support the recovery process.
An unpleasant change of pace
When a patient is recovering from any kind of surgical procedure, a filling meal is likely to be one of the last things on their mind. This could be caused by any number of factors present in the average hospital stay: they may be nauseous due to drugs, lacking an appetite thanks to pain or being bed bound, or may simply be too exhausted to eat.
These factors, combined with an unfamiliar (and often uncomfortable) environment can disrupt a patient’s regular eating habits. While this may not normally be an issue, providing your body with a steady flow of high-quality food containing all necessary nutrients, vitamins, and minerals, is essential for recovering as quickly as possible.
Engineering an appetite
Mindful eating can ease this process by encouraging a return to a normal relationship with food. In short, the practice revolves around turning each meal into a sensory experience. It’s a modern application of the Buddhist concept of mindfulness, which encourages paying active attention to one’s thoughts, feelings, and surroundings to help process mental load. Now, mindful eating is frequently recommended as a method of regaining control over eating habits.
Mindful eating often involves:
Encouraging mindful eating through healthcare catering services can deliver a much-needed feeling of normalcy when patients need it most. Returning to normal life after surgery is a piecemeal process, and breaking that down into smaller, more approachable steps using tools like mindful eating can support them on their journey to recovery.
Dinner and a discharge
Cater Care remains dedicated to supporting healthcare providers through serving fresh, quality meals that are both delicious and designed to aid the recovery process. Mindful eating is just one of many tools in the toolbox, and always works best when combined with excellent medical care and supportive, nutritious catering. If you’re interested in learning more about how dietitian-designed meals could both help your patients and ease the burden on your staff, then reach out to our team via the details below.
National Business Development Manager – Cater Care
Ph: 0424 190 566
jonathan.storer@catercare.com.au
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References:
1.Harvard School of Public Health. “Mindful Eating.” The Nutrition Source. Harvard School of Public Health, September 14, 2020. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/mindful-eating/
