[Nutritionist's role, attitude and training for home medical care]

It has been a year since the Kaigo (home medical assistance) insurance started for people who need an assistance in their daily living. Because of a national health insurance policy was partially amended in October 1994, a nutritionist's performance based on the home medical care guideline has been graded by scoring in points. According to the facts collected in 1998 by the department of nutrition at National Health Insurance, it appears that only the 4 percent of hospitals have executed training for their nutritionists. Although providing a nutritional assistance to patient is an essential part of home medical insurance policy, it is rather difficult to collect data with such a lack of low execution of nutritionist training by hospitals. We simply could not measure how a home nutritional assistance has been effective to patient. We therefore ought to develop perspectives of home health nutritional management, and we also do review a current nutritionist's role, attitude and training for home medical care in terms of how a nutritional assistance to a patient to be successful.