Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate and to improve the actual condition of food service for patients in hospitals. For this purpose, were distributed to 283 patients admitted to a university hospital and three general hospitals between January 27 and February 15, 1997. The department participated in the study included internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics, orthopedics and so forth. For meal time, 61.1% of patients wanted to eat breakfast at 8 am, 55.8% lunch at noon, and 73.5% dinner at 6 pm. The patients complained about unsatisfactory hospital food itself by 37.8%, about insufficient food amount by 19.6%, about menu with no choice by 41.2% and about low variety of the meals by 32.7%. Sixty two point nine percent of the subjects enjoyed snacks between meals because of poor appetite at meal time(46.1%), delayed food service(39.9%) and others(11.2%). The types of diet were mainly regular ones(58.6%) with some high protein(12.4%) and diabetic sensitive ones(7.1%). As eating place, the patient's prefered bed(51.9%), room-table(27.2%) and dining room(17.7%). Fifty-five percent of them also wanted hospital foods available to their caring relatives.

• Keywords: food service; general hospital; patients