Nurses estimating body weight and height to screen for malnutrition in bedridden patients: Good practice?

This article examines whether nurses can accurately estimate the weight and height of bedridden patients—key parameters for calculating BMI and identifying malnutrition. During a nursing congress, 58 registered nurses were asked to visually estimate these values for a simulated patient.

Findings show significant discrepancies between estimated and actual values. Although the average estimated BMI seemed correct, 1 in 4 nurses misclassified the patient into the wrong BMI category. No correlation was found between estimation accuracy and nurses' own weight, height, age, gender, or years of experience.

The authors conclude that visual estimation is unreliable in clinical nutrition screening. When direct measurement is not feasible, validated alternative methods such as ulna length or arm span should be used instead.

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