Menus, diets and allergies¶

Each meal of the day has its menu: the dishes the kitchen serves at breakfast, lunch, dinner or a snack. Once the menu is confirmed, every resident served at that meal gets their place (a meal service), and WideCare checks each plate against the resident’s diets, allergies and texture.

Meal types¶

The meal types are set in Meals → Configuration → Meal Types: Breakfast, Morning Snack, Lunch, Afternoon Snack and Dinner are provided. For each type:

• Default Time — the usual hour of the meal. It places the meal in the day and decides which meals a resident who comes only part of the day is served.

• Share of the Day’s Needs (%) — the part of the day’s energy and protein this meal is expected to bring. A resident who eats only some meals in the home is judged on those meals only. Left empty on every type, the day is shared evenly.

Building a menu¶

1. Go to Meals → Operations → Menus (or click Create Today’s Menus on the dashboard to create all of today’s menus at once).

2. Choose the Date and the Meal Type. There is one menu per meal type and per day.

3. In the Dishes tab, add the dishes from the catalogue. For each line:

   • Category — starter, main course, dessert…

   • Alternative — tick it for a dish offered instead of the main one. An alternative is not put on every plate: it is chosen resident by resident.

   • Notes — a word for the kitchen.

4. Click Confirm.

The Menus list opens on today’s menus; the Today, Tomorrow and This Week filters and the calendar view show the other days.

The menu status¶

• Confirm lays a place for every resident served at that meal, with the menu’s dishes. Nobody in hospital or away that day gets one, and a resident who comes only part of the day gets the meals of their hours.

• Lay Missing Couverts (on a confirmed menu) lays the places of residents arrived since the confirmation, then opens the list of the meal’s places.

• Cancel takes off the round the places nobody has dealt with yet. A plate already served or refused stays.

• Reset to Draft brings a cancelled menu back to draft.

When you change the dishes of a confirmed menu, the places not served yet follow the new dishes. A plate already served or refused, or one whose dish was changed for that resident, keeps its own dishes.

Diets¶

The diets are listed in Meals → Configuration → Dietary Regimes (Normal, Diabetic, Low Sodium, Low Fat, Enteral feeding, Enriched are provided). On a diet:

• Code — a short code shown on the round and on the printed sheets (for example DIAB).

• Restrictions — Salt-Free, Sugar-Free, Low Fat, Gluten-Free, Lactose-Free, Vegetarian, Halal, Kosher. WideCare uses them to check the dishes.

• The Residents button lists the residents on that diet.

A resident can have several diets at once (diabetic and low salt, for example). Record them on the resident’s Nutrition tab, in Diets and Textures, or on their care plan (see below).

Food allergies¶

The allergens are listed in Meals → Configuration → Allergies, each with a default severity: Low - Monitor, Medium - Warning, High - Strong Warning, Critical - Block Prescription.

A resident’s food allergies are the food lines of their allergy table, on the Care tab of the resident: the severity recorded there for that resident wins over the default one. The Food Allergies block of the Nutrition tab shows the same list: adding an allergen there records the allergy, removing it deletes the line.

Diets on the care plan¶

The Nutrition tab of the care plan edits the same information as the resident’s record: Dietary Regimes, Texture, Food Allergens, the resident’s food preferences and Food Dislikes. What a nurse changes there is what the kitchen reads, and the change is written in the plan’s history.

Dietary alerts¶

For every place laid, WideCare compares the dishes with the resident’s profile:

Meals → Operations → Dietary Alerts lists today’s plates with a warning, with the sector, room, resident, diets and place. The Critical Alerts filter keeps the critical ones.

Going further¶

• Dishes and nutritional values

• Food textures (IDDSI)

• The meal round

• Nutritional monitoring and undernutrition