Background The Patient Led Assessment of Nutritional Care (PLANC) tool was developed by Dorothy House to assess nutritional needs in palliative patients, identify areas to support nutritional needs, and improve quality of life. It has been successfully used in the in-patient unit since 2016 but patients in the community were not having their nutritional needs formally assessed and there was no specific pathway for nutritional care. Dorothy House introduced the PLANC in the community to capture patient and carer concerns around nutrition and support them with nutritional care planning and education.

Aims To review the impact of dietician led PLANC training given to community and day patient teams. To improve structured documentation around nutritional care.

Methods A biannual audit of community palliative patient SystmOne data will examine:

1. Completion of the PLANC tool within the first three visits to community palliative patients.

2. Completion of one of the dietary algorithms (nutritional care plans).

3. Completion of monthly repeat PLANC tools.

Results SystmOne data shows an increase in the use of PLANC across community and day patients’ services from a baseline of 17% in September 2022 to 58% in March 2024, following targeted training. Percentage of completed dietary algorithms and monthly repeated PLANCs have steadily increased from 29% to 41% and 14% to 36% in March 2023 and March 2024 respectively.

Conclusion Nutritional care needs cannot always be met due to the nature of the patient group, however, the PLANC tool offers patients and carers a way to voice what is important to them in relation to food and drink. This provides Dorothy House with a means of formally capturing this information and the opportunity to offer nutritional care support and advice. Future work will focus on qualitative assessment of community palliative patients’ experiences with the nutritional care provided.