Objective: Nurses take an active role in determining the nutritional status of the patient, detecting nutritional changes, and informing the nutritional support team when necessary. This study was conducted to evaluate the attitudes of nurses about nutritional care, to measure their knowledge levels, and to determine their opinions.

Methods: A total of 118 nurses working in inpatient services and intensive care units of Kutahya Health Sciences University Evliya Celebi Training and Research Hospital, who agreed to participate in the study, were included in the study. The participant information form, the scale for evaluating the importance of nutritional assessment, the level of knowledge about nutritional care, and the perceived nutritional quality of care in nurses were filled, and the data were analyzed with the Statistical Program for Social Sciences package program. Descriptive statistics were given as numbers, percentages, and averages. In addition, an independent sample t-test and a one-way analysis of variance test were used. A P value of <.05 was considered statistically significant in all evaluations.

Results: Of the participants, 60.2% (n = 71) were female, 45.8% (n = 54) had 6-10 years of professional experience, and 85.6% (n = 101) received training on nutritional support. The nurses scored 21.36 ± 4.09 points for the importance of nutritional assessment, 25.33 ± 4.46 points for the level of knowledge about nutritional care, and 33.25 ± 6.33 points for the perceived quality of care related to nutritional care. It was found that there was a significant relationship between the mean scores for the importance of nutritional assessment and gender and education about nutritional support (P < .05). A significant correlation was found between the mean score of the perceived quality of care regarding nutritional care and gender (P < .05).

Conclusions: Evaluation and monitoring of the patient’s nutritional status is a part of nursing care. Although most of the nurses are aware of the importance of nutritional assessment, their knowledge levels and perceived quality of care about nutritional care are not at the desired level.

Keywords: Nursing care, nutrition, nutritional therapy