Nutrition and palliative care

Abstract

Requests to GPs for nutritional supplements for patients approaching the end of life are common. Commercially available food supplements are expensive and often prescribed inappropriately, costing the NHS large sums every year. Judging whether it is appropriate to prescribe nutritional supplements in palliative care situations is difficult. The decision will depend on many different factors including the stage of the patient’s illness, and the wishes of the patient and family. This article explores nutrition in palliative care with the aim of providing GPs with some simple tools to use to decide whether nutritional supplements are appropriate and what form they should take.