Nursing intervention to promote functional feeding.

Results of this study suggest that specific nursing protocols can be designed to promote functional feeding for demented elders in nursing homes while enhancing the mealtime environment for both the demented elders and their caregivers. By nurses altering the feeding environment (context) alone, subjects received more food and drink, refused less food and showed more self-feeding. Major findings were that subjects demonstrated increased independence by refusing food more often and initiating self-feeding more frequently.