Research identified variation in nutrition practice by community prescribing dietitians with regards to the identification and management of malnutrition amongst community dwelling adults.

To improve nutritional outcomes of community dwelling adults with malnutrition we identified three related hypotheses to be tested: i) Southampton Community Prescribing Support Service dietitians achieve 100% compliance with selected standards of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence Clinical Guideline (CG) 32, ii) patient service satisfaction amongst community dwelling adults accessing the prescribing support service is high (90%), and iii) nationally, dietitians use weight gain goal >10% and BMI >18.5 kg/m2 as outcome measures from the service phases of prescribing support. A retrospective audit of records of 100 community-dwelling adults accessing local services considered CG32 "Indications for nutrition support in hospital and community standard 1.3.1" and CG32 "Monitoring of nutrition support in hospital and community standard 1.5.6". A questionnaire was distributed to community-dwelling adults (n = 52) accessing the service, in addition to a national survey of dietetic practice. Compliance with standard 1.3.1 was 46% and with standard 1.5.6 it was 82%. The majority of patients (86%; n = 13) reported satisfaction with the support service. Nationally, 89% (n = 51) of dietitians use weight and 87% (n = 50) use BMI as an outcome measure for success of nutritional intervention. All research hypotheses were rejected. These results suggest there is considerable variation in the identification and management of malnutrition amongst community dwelling adults, which may impact on clinical and nutritional outcomes. Future work should consider quality improvement projects to address potential barriers to achieving best practice by community prescribing dietitians through the use of nutrition pathways to support older adults with malnutrition.