Date of Conferral

2022

Degree

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

School

Nursing

Advisor

Rachel Pitman

Abstract

AbstractFood insecurity is not having enough food or resources or not being able to procure nutritious foods. An observation that nurses in one oncology clinic rarely assessed their patients for food insecurity as part of their regular assessment led to the development and testing of an educational intervention for nurses which was to create awareness on the importance of assessing food insecurity among oncology patients and to learn to use the Household Food Insecurity Assess Scale (HFIAS) in assessing patients. Summative evaluation was done using a pre/and posttest. The Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the Virginia Henderson nursing need theories were used to explain how food insecurity was a vital part of physiological needs and these physiological needs must be met to achieve optimal health. The Doctor of Nursing essentials I and IV were used to relay the need to take care of these patients by engaging in their wellbeing and through collaboration with other professions handling this dilemma on food insecurity. Twenty oncology nurses-participants responded to the pretest and 16 participants responded to the posttest. The findings based on the chi-square and z -test analysis, showed a significant difference in areas on implementation of food insecurity assessment, providing the right tools through the use of HFIAS, and referral/ resources for food insecurity assessment. The overall findings with a p-value of .00375 which is significant at p < .05 suggests the educational program was successful and showed increase in knowledge after the educational intervention. With future translation of the HFIAS tool and resource flier into additional languages to improve the readability of the tool, this education has the potential to effect positive social changes for diverse patient population.

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