---
name: nutrition-assessment
description: Use when asked to administer, score, or explain a Nutrition Assessment — nutritional status evaluation using the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) — grounded in FormExamples/form-examples; closely related to dietic-assessment.
---

# Nutrition Assessment

Nutritional status evaluation using the Malnutrition Universal
Screening Tool (MUST), with comprehensive dietary, swallowing,
gastrointestinal, and nutritional support assessment.

## Scoring

**Instrument:** MUST.

- **Step 1:** BMI score (0 = > 20, 1 = 18.5–20, 2 = < 18.5).
- **Step 2:** unplanned weight loss in past 3–6 months (0 = < 5%, 1 =
  5–10%, 2 = > 10%).
- **Step 3:** acute disease effect score (0 = none, 2 = acutely ill with
  no nutritional intake > 5 days).
- **Total:** 0 = low risk, 1 = medium risk, ≥ 2 = high risk. Severity
  levels: low (well-nourished), moderate (at risk), high (malnourished),
  critical (severe malnutrition with complications).

## What it covers

Demographics; anthropometric measurements; dietary history; nutritional
screening (MUST); swallowing and oral health; gastrointestinal
function; food allergies and intolerances; nutritional requirements;
current nutritional support; and care plan with monitoring.

## Relationship to dietic-assessment

[[dietic-assessment]] is the more comprehensive, dietitian-led
counterpart adding GLIM malnutrition diagnosis, NRS-2002, SARC-F, and
refeeding-risk screening on top of the same MUST core; this assessment
is the more general, MUST-centred nutritional screen suitable for a
broader range of clinical settings and assessors.

## Common pitfalls

- **Treating MUST as a full malnutrition diagnosis** — MUST is a
  screening tool identifying risk; a formal diagnosis (e.g. via GLIM,
  see [[dietic-assessment]]) requires further criteria.
- **Missing swallowing difficulty as a nutritional risk driver** —
  dysphagia can be the actual root cause of weight loss and reduced
  intake; skipping the swallowing section can miss the real problem
  behind an abnormal MUST score.
- **Not re-screening on a schedule** — nutritional risk changes,
  especially in acute or deteriorating illness; MUST is meant to be
  repeated at defined intervals, not scored once and left static.

## Learn more

- [FormExamples: nutrition-assessment](https://github.com/FormExamples/form-examples/tree/main/forms/nutrition-assessment) for the full implementation, clinical references, and worked examples.
- [[dietic-assessment]] for the related, more comprehensive dietitian-led assessment.