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. 2022 Apr 19;22(2):7. doi: 10.5334/ijic.6436

Table 1.

Examples for possible real-life Integration of Chefs in Healthcare.


LEVEL OF EFFECTIVE INTEGRATED FOOD AND NUTRITION CARE CLINICAL INTEGRATION PROFESSIONAL INTEGRATION ORGANIZATIONAL INTEGRATION SYSTEM INTEGRATION

Person-centered care Chefs carrying out taste steering assessments with patients on taste disturbances and create solutions for taste deterioration;
Chefs talking with patients about their satisfaction with intervention outcomes in cooperation with other health professionals
Chefs attending interprofessional team meetings and discussing treatment options with other professions in the nutritional care team Chefs working together with educational institutions to educate chefs about nutrition and health
Chefs working on promotion of workplace health, offering healthy cooking classes for employees
Chefs advocating for a high quality cooking process to improve the nutritional value of meals for patients with needs

Population-based care Chefs creating cooking books for adapting meals and recipes for people with specific nutritional needs Chefs cooperating with dieticians in developing baseline menus for people with specific needs Chefs working together with insurance companies to promote cooking classes as social prescribing Chefs working together with their professional association in order to promote healthy meals for the population and nutritional education for chefs

Legend: Table 1 illustrates practice-based examples, how chefs will be integrated in food and nutrition care delivery in healthcare through their new occupational profile developed during the ongoing EU-funded project “Nectar” (Grant agreement number 621707). As may be seen from the table, chefs’ involvement includes functional as well as normative aspects of integration. The profile developed will be based on learning outcomes during the training process, which include a comprehensive set of knowledge, skills and attitudes enabling chefs to become an integral part of the care team.