During meal time, having to halt delivery to fulfill a patient’s request for more ketchup or sweetener can back up the flow of room-service deliveries.
Victoria Franklin, director of food and nutrition services at University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, Colo., solved potential forgetfulness and the need to meet differing tastes by outfitting each delivery cart with a tackle box filled with condiments.
“It was definitely problem-solving to make sure that people got the things that go along with their meal in a timely fashion and didn’t have to wait another 30 minutes for a ketchup packet to come up,” she says.
Each tackle box includes a reusable laminated cheat sheet to help staffers determine which condiments a patient is allowed with his or her specific diet. Condiments in the tackle boxes are replenished at the end of each day for the next day’s meal service.