CHALLENGES FACED BY THE KITCHEN STAFFS DURING PANDEMICS IN TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL OF JHARKHAND: A DISCRIPTIVE STUDY

Introduction: Providing appropriate nutrition in the hospital settings is a challenging task due to diverse dietary need of the population. (i) to assess different dietary package in the kitchen (ii) to nd out the challeng Objectives: es due to increasing patient load during pandemic. This was a record based cross sectional study conducted in Methodology: the Central kitchen of st th Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS), Ranchi for a period of four weeks (1 August to 28 August,2020). Collected Data was entered in Microsoft Excel Sheet and was analysed using SPSS software version 20. The mean (SD) population tha Result: t was served by the hospital kitchen 838.86(75.60). The proportion of total patient with respect to total patient was 0.256. The main dietary difference for pandemic patient was found in terms of high protein content, change in rice quality and use of butter to increase palatability. Due to limited human Conclusion: resource and increasing pandemic patient kitchen staffs were pressurized. The hospital administration must get prepared for unpredictable exponential load due to pandemic or any outbreak.