Nutrition Support Team(NST)

Thank you for visiting the home page of Saitama Medical Center NST. As you know, the NST (Nutrition Support Team) is a team that supports the nutrition of patients in cooperation with a wide range of medical professions.

On our homepage, we mainly introduce the contents of our NST activities and the practical training of the NST specialist therapists. Since the start of the NST, we have been working hard to meet the needs of everyone while all of our staff is still sharing their opinions. If you have any questions or comments, we would be happy to hear from you by e-mail to the NST office (smcnst@saitama-med.ac.jp).

The NST started in July 2001 based on a proposal from the Department of Clinical Laboratory of our hospital asking, "Can we expect early recovery, prevention of complications, QOL improvement, shortening of the number of hospital days by measuring the pre-albumin (Transthyretin-TTR), one of the nutritional assessment items, and by accurately evaluating and managing the nutritional status of hospitalized patients?" Based on that premise, we organized a team of physicians, laboratory technicians, nurses, pharmacists, and national registered dietitians, and began investigating and examining the nutritional status of patients who underwent digestive surgery in the surgical ward, and this was the basis of our NST activities. After that, we continued case study meetings and study groups, and established a target of, "Is it possible to provide high quality medical treatment to patients by conducting proper nutritional therapy?" Our NST newly started activities based on requests from all the departments from October 1, 2003.

The current NST have established core members consisting of seven departments including eight physicians, the Department of Clinical Laboratory, Nursing Department, Department of Pharmacy, Department of Nutrition, Department of Clinical Engineering, and Administrative Department, and each ward and other department has an NST working member and linked staff. In addition, there are 19 NST specialist therapists (6 clinical laboratory technologists, 4 pharmacists, 3 registered dietitians and 3 nurses) enrolled, and we are also operating as a training facility for NST specialist therapists.

Our Hospital NST does NST nutritional support proposals by Doctor's direct request and nutritional management plans, and we have been performing the abstraction of high risk patients with linked nurses.

The main activities of NST are,