The Power of Nutrition Podcast · Abbott Nutrition Health Institute

Beyond the Ramp: Person-Centered Interventions for People with Disabilities in the Inpatient Setting

·32 min·2 clips

A patient’s bill of rights should cover personal support persons, medical equipment, and DNR orders.

1. The Power of Nutrition Podcast episode “Beyond the Ramp: Person-Centered Interventions for People with Disabilities in the Inpatient Setting” focuses on inpatient accessibility and nutrition care for people with disabilities. 2. Mara Bowen hosts Dr. Susie Baxter and Elena Morales, both registered dietitians, and their lived and professional experience matters because Susie has researched disability and nutrition while Elena works as a clinical dietitian in San Diego. 3. The episode asks how hospitals can provide disability-centered nutrition care without worsening access barriers, malnutrition, or discharge problems. 4. Susie says she began dietetics in 1981 at a residential school for children with disabilities and later spent most of her career in nutrition research at the Medical College of Georgia and the University of South Carolina. 5. Susie also says she was diagnosed with erythromyelalgia in 2010, describes it as a rare neurovascular pain disorder, and says medication does not work for her. 6. Elena says she grew up with disabling chronic illnesses, was later hit by a car, and was inspired by the disability rights movement and Berkeley to study dietetics and disability studies. 7. Elena describes work at Berkeley’s Disability Access and Compliance, the creation of disability organizations and wellness programs, a UCSF project on SNAP for SSI recipients, and her 2021 Individualized Supervised Practice Pathway. 8. Elena says disability can affect nutrition status through food inaccessibility, difficulty buying groceries or cooking, food insecurity, and higher nutrition risk on hospital admission. 9. Susie cites 2019 inpatient data, notes that 84% of adult inpatient stays involved one or more comorbidities, and says disabled patients had an average length of stay of 9.5 days versus 5.5 days overall. 10. The speakers note that 20 to 50 percent of admitted patients present with malnutrition and that age, comorbidities, and polypharmacy are major risk factors. 11. Susie says 49% of malnourished patients hospitalized for more than a week deteriorate further and 30% of previously well-nourished patients develop malnutrition during the stay. 12. Elena says the hospital environment can intensify distress for people with dementia, neurodivergent patients, and patients who rely on routine, bedding texture, or frequent repositioning. 13. Susie reads from the National Council on Disability’s 2021 report and names COVID-19 treatment denial, ventilator access problems, crisis standards of care, and vaccine-priority failures as examples of disability barriers. 14. The report excerpt also mentions physical, communication, and procedural barriers in testing and vaccination, including face-mask-related lip-reading problems for deaf, hard-of-hearing, deaf-blind, and blind people. 15. Susie says inpatient teams should ask about preferred accommodations, safe wheelchair transport, 24-7 sign-language interpreters, and the impact of missing long-term routines or supports. 16. Elena says trust in the hospital forms quickly, that providers should listen to each patient’s own account of disability, and that discharge planning must account for transportation, blindness, and other access needs. 17. The tone is practical and instructional, with both speakers moving between personal experience, policy examples, and bedside recommendations. 18. The format is a host-led interview with alternating explanations, a personal anecdote from Elena, and repeated references back to earlier episodes in the series. 19. People interested in inpatient nutrition, disability access, and hospital policy. 20. Listeners seeking entertainment without healthcare policy detail.

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