Nutrition

Department History

The Department of Nutrition was established in 1930. After 90 years of development, it has become a medical technology department with multiple functions, including clinical care, teaching, and catering support. Its mission is to provide integrated, cross-disciplinary medical nutrition services, and its development goal is to build a comprehensive medical nutrition center. In 2002, the Nutrition Department at the Lianhe Road Campus was established and opened; in 2007, the Nutrition Department at the Jinpu Campus was established and opened; in 2004, the Huikang Business Center and the 18th-floor Restaurant were established and opened (closed in 2009); and in 2008, the comprehensive reconstruction of the Nutrition Department at the Changchun Road Campus was completed.

At present, the department has a total of 144 employees, including nutrition physicians, technicians, nurses, administrators, and chefs. Of these, 21 are establishment employees, 107 are contract employees, and 16 are retirees retained in service. The Department of Nutrition provides nutritional treatment and meals for hospitalized patients occupying nearly 3,700 beds throughout the hospital. It also prepares and supplies meals in the hospital for more than 4,000 faculty and staff members and more than 2,000 students receiving further training or standardized residency training.

The cafeteria has a total area of 4,374 m² and includes various specialty catering kitchens, such as an EN formula preparation room, a therapeutic kitchen for patients, self-service counters for employees, a professor’s counter, a reduced-meal counter, and specialty main- and side-dish counters. It provides replacement meals for meals missed because of surgery, dialysis meals, health-examination breakfasts, night-shift breakfasts, work meals, holiday-duty meals, and other services. Dozens of therapeutic diets are available for patients with diabetes, kidney disease, liver disease, or gout; for patients undergoing stem-cell transplantation or surgery; and for children and postpartum women. The EN formula room is equipped with nearly 20 enteral nutrition preparations, including blenderized and elemental diets. Delivery of blenderized diets now reaches the whole of Dalian and the surrounding counties, districts, and villages.

In 2019, the number of employee meals reached 2.6419 million, and the number of patient meals reached 1.5366 million. The compliance rate for therapeutic diets reached 100%, and the meal participation rate exceeded 95%.

Technical Development

With the support of the hospital, the nutrition discipline has developed rapidly over the past decade. Information technology has overcome the bottleneck caused by the lack of clinical nutrition pathways, and the department now has specialized examination equipment. Focusing on critical illnesses, the perioperative period, day surgery, gestational diabetes, obesity, and other areas, it has improved the precision of nutritional diagnosis and treatment in accordance with specialty- and disease-specific requirements. The nutrition discipline is transforming from traditional dietary services toward a chronic disease prevention and treatment system.

In 1991, the Department of Nutrition took the lead nationwide in establishing an all-day nutrition outpatient clinic. It began providing nutritional assessment, consultation, and nutrient testing for various common diseases, and was also the first in the province to conduct research on lead contamination and its prevention and control.

In 2013, working jointly with the Department of Obstetrics, it launched a one-day outpatient service for gestational diabetes. Through one day of outpatient education and on-site experience with standardized meal plans, pregnant women with gestational diabetes could receive treatment as early as possible, reducing complications. This was of great significance for improving maternal and infant outcomes.

In 2014, it participated in the first one-stop multidisciplinary diabetes diagnosis and treatment platform in Northeast China, organized by the Department of Endocrinology, thereby implementing an integrated diabetes-management model.

In 2015, the Department of Nutrition took over the entrusted management of the Dalian Nutrition Society and was rated a Dalian 4A social organization the following year. For three consecutive years, it received the Dalian Association for Science and Technology Special Award for Excellence in Science Popularization and the Outstanding Science and Technology Society Award.

In 2016, centering on all intensive care units throughout the hospital, it promoted integrated medical nutrition services through consultation, enteral nutrition support, and other pathways. The utilization rate accounted for 52.1% of the number of patients discharged from wards that year.

In 2017, the department established a three-level food-safety monitoring system, strictly implemented the system for obtaining certificates and invoices for food products and tracing their sources, fully introduced tender-based procurement of raw materials, improved all work systems, and implemented traceability management at every key stage.

In 2018, it established a clinical nutrition teaching and research section, launched nutrition diagnosis and treatment software, and completed the construction of clinical nutrition pathways. The meal-ordering system was upgraded to enable real-time ordering and seamless linkage with dietary medical orders. The hospital’s therapeutic diets and enteral nutrition treatment were placed under fully electronic supervision, from medical orders, ingredient input, and preparation to nutrient labels, making nutritional treatment more standardized and safe.

In 2019, the nutrition outpatient consultation rooms became independent. Equipment such as a basal metabolic testing system and a body-composition analyzer was purchased, achieving a breakthrough from zero in specialized testing.

In 2020, a patient mobile-phone WeChat meal-ordering system was launched. It enabled remote self-service ordering, anytime access to recipes and ordering records, and automatic receipt of disease-specific nutrition guidance and recommendations, making the service more considerate and convenient.

Teaching Achievements

Since 2003, the department has undertaken clinical nutrition teaching each year for seven different educational levels and programs, including seven-year clinical medicine, five-year clinical medicine, nutrition, nursing, and adult education programs. The annual teaching load has reached a maximum of 160 class hours. Since 2005, it has accepted trainees for further study and undertaken internship supervision and teaching for Dalian Medical University.

In 2011 and from 2017 to 2019, it organized Liaoning Province continuing medical education programs.

In 2018, it completed continuing education training on food safety for Dalian science-popularization instructors.

From 2016 to 2019, it held the Dalian Summer Nutrition Forum for four consecutive years, inviting renowned experts from Japan, Taiwan, and China to lecture in Dalian. In 2018, it held the Innovation-Driven Dalian High-End Academic Nutrition Forum. By bringing experts in and sending staff out, it promoted the improvement of nutrition teaching standards.

Research Expertise

In recent years, the Department of Nutrition has made substantial progress in the staffing and composition of nutrition professionals, departmental hardware, the implementation and workload of medical, teaching, and research activities, the quantity and quality of published papers, and the level of scientific research. It has published six popular-science monographs, including Clinical Nutrition Handbook, Nutrition Recipes for Infants and Young Children, and Nutrition and Support in Disease; published two SCI papers and dozens of papers in domestic core journals; and submitted the National Natural Science Foundation of China project Construction and Research of the Dalian Nutrition Service Platform.

Its scientific research achievements have been abundant. It has received one second prize for scientific and technological progress from Dalian, one second prize and one third prize for academic achievements in natural sciences from Liaoning Province, and two second prizes for academic achievements in natural sciences from Dalian.

Specialty Features

The nutrition outpatient clinic provides testing of various nutrients and consultation and assessment of nutritional status. Services include nutritional intervention and dietary guidance for chronic diseases and malnutrition; enhanced nutritional support for postoperative patients; nutritional support treatment for patients with tumors and those receiving radiotherapy or chemotherapy; home enteral nutrition support and the formulation and monitoring of staged nutritional plans for patients with stroke and those recovering from gastrointestinal surgery; and assessment and guidance of nutritional status during pregnancy and lactation and among older adults, infants, and children.

In 2018, the nutrition outpatient clinic launched a medical weight-management program. It scientifically manages body weight through dietary and nutritional intervention and provides 450-kcal reduced meals for weight management, medical nutrition meal replacements, and other services, with clear results. In 2019 alone, it recorded 12,000 person-visits. The nutrition outpatient clinic now has specialized examination equipment, including a resting energy metabolism cart, a body-composition analyzer, a handgrip dynamometer, and an infrared weight-and-height measuring device. These devices are noninvasive, rapid, and convenient, providing a more precise basis for individualized nutritional support treatment and nutrition plans.

Nutrition education covers a broad range. In addition to cooperating with inpatient wards on patient education and distributing dietary nutrition handbooks, the department began Internet outreach in 2015. It established WeChat public platforms such as Dayi Nutrition and the Dalian Nutrition Society, and disseminated multiple health columns, including original nutrition information and online live courses featuring expert interpretations, nutrition questions and answers, food knowledge, and everyday knowledge, enabling audiences to quickly obtain practical nutrition science information. Since 2000, it has also prepared nutrition science-popularization articles each year for many media outlets, including Dalian Television, Dalian Radio, Dalian Daily, the Evening News, and the Morning News.

Beginning in 2016, it organized the Dalian National Nutrition Week public-welfare activities for four consecutive years. Each year, it held nutrition free clinics on Dalian Science and Technology Workers’ Day; science-popularization activities in communities under the theme Healthy Life, Reasonable Diet; National Nutrition Week—Into Schools nutrition science activities for pupils at 12 primary schools; and free nutrition consultation services at the Dalian 365 Citizen Service Center, among other activities. The cumulative number of science-popularization activities exceeded 100.

Human Resources

There are currently 11 nutrition physicians. Those with senior professional titles—2 at the senior-most level and 1 at the deputy-senior level—account for 27.3%; those with master’s or doctoral degrees account for 72.7%; and 5 have domestic or overseas study or clinical standardized-training experience, accounting for 45.5%. All nutrition physicians hold qualifications as clinical physicians and physicians of preventive medicine, and all have more than 3 years of work experience. They have extensive experience in the indications, tolerance, and prevention of complications associated with nutritional support treatment for different diseases. At present, nutrition consultations and routine nutrition diagnosis and treatment cover all clinical departments in the hospital, and the department is gradually collaborating with multiple departments to conduct multidisciplinary team (MDT) diagnosis and treatment.

Department Honors

In 2010, the Department of Nutrition was awarded the title of China Clinical Nutrition Demonstration Unit by the Chinese Nutrition Society. More than 1,000 hospitals nationwide participated in the assessment, and only 27 received this honor.

In 2011, it received the Best Departmental Cultural Philosophy Award presented at our hospital’s Culture Festival.

In 2014, it received the Advanced Work Unit award from the Liaoning Nutrition Society.

In 2016, it received the Innovation Award from the Dalian Association for Science and Technology.

In 2017, it was awarded the title of National Medical Weight-Loss Demonstration Center.

In 2018, it received the Chinese Nutrition Society’s Dalian Innovation-Driven Assistance Service Station project and the hospital’s 2018 Advanced Unit Management Award.

In 2019, it was awarded the title of a National Registered Dietitian Practical Teaching Base—one of only two in the three northeastern provinces—and received the Most Creative Organization Award presented by the Chinese Nutrition Society.

In 2020, it was awarded the title of one of the Top 100 Medical Nutrition Weight-Management Teaching Bases.