Hospital Housekeeping by Charlotte A. Aikens

[Sidenote: Diet Lists and Blanks]

For the housekeepers' guidance in preparing meals for the patients, a diet list showing the number of patients to be provided for and the classes of diets required, needs to be prepared. The duty of preparing this list usually devolves upon the head nurses in charge of the wards and the lists should be sent in either at night or early in the morning of each day. Special articles for individual patients will usually be prepared in the diet kitchen, and may or may not be placed on the diet sheet sent to the general kitchen. In large institutions where there is a pantry on each floor in which special diets are prepared, special requisition blanks are used in many hospitals in procuring the supplies. The amount of eggs, milk and beef juice and the various articles that are expensive and perishable, are estimated by the person in charge, and the requisition is signed by the superintending nurse before it is sent to the kitchen or store room. Such a requisition blank is usually about the size of a doctor's prescription blank, and they are most convenient when prepared in blocks similar to letter pads.