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

doi:10.5388/aon.2012.12.4.331

Comparison of Perception of the Neutropenic Diet between Nurses and Patients.

Mi Ae KIM 1 ; Ihn Sook JEONG

Affiliations

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Keywords

Neutropenia; Diet; Perception

Country

Republic of Korea

Language

Korean

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 chi2-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.