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Allowing Pleasure/Comfort Foods for a Non-Menu Patient

Kevin U
  • Updated

About Serving Pleasure/Comfort Foods

The means to allow pleasure/comfort foods for a non-menu patient (e.g., palliative care patient) is to configure their personal menu to be do not serve (DNS) for all menu categories in all meal periods/snack times except for the Extra Items category.

In this way, no items from the scheduled menus in the system appear on the personal menu, and any pleasure foods can be added as personal menu items in the Extra items category for whatever meal period/snack time you need to add a personal menu item to, as per screenshot below. 

comfort_food_personal_menu.png

What is Recommended Method to Create a Personal Menu for Pleasure/Comfort Foods?

Rather than individually configure a personal menu for a patient to allow for pleasure foods (i.e., configure a personal menu to be DNS except for the Extra Items category), you can instead create a diet intervention (see Creating a Diet Intervention) that is configured the same, and then assign that diet intervention to a patient when applicable.*

You create a "Pleasure Foods" diet intervention as follows:

  • Name the diet intervention accordingly, such as "Pleasure Foods" or "Comfort Foods".
  • Select all diet/texture type combinations for the diet intervention (so that it is available to any patient assigned that diet/texture type combination).
  • For each meal period (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and each snack time (snack AM, snack PM, snack HS), set each menu category as DNS except for the Extra Items category (example screenshots of breakfast and lunch below). For instructions on doing so, see Adding a Menu Category (or Categories) of a Meal Period as a "Do Not Serve" for a Diet Intervention.

    breakfast_extra_items.png   lunch_extra_items.png

  • After setting up the DNS customization for each meal period/snack time, the Customization List of the diet intervention should appear similar to the screenshot below:

    DNS_all_meal_periods.png

Note: Your facility may prefer to directly customize a patient's personal menu (by removing items via DNS and adding personal menu items) rather than using a diet intervention. If so, then the diet intervention is still required, but it can remain blank (i.e., without customizations), and as such will be name-only for identification purposes on tickets/menus. 

Assigning the "Comfort Foods" Diet Intervention to a Patient

With the "Comfort Foods" diet intervention created, you can then assign it to the patient (see Assigning a Diet Intervention to a Resident/Patient).

assign_comfort_foods_diet_intervention.png

Printing Name of "Comfort Foods" Diet Intervention on Tickets/Menus

The diet intervention name can be printed on the following people reports (by selecting the Diet Intervention check box) to inform staff the patient is DNS except for pleasure/comfort foods.

comfort_food_name.png