The Relationship between Emotions during Hospitalisation and Patients’ Eating Behaviour.

Abstract

This paper explores the emotions elicited, in relation to food consumption and the relationship between emotions and food provision attributes (food attributes, familiarity of food, feeling cared by staff, rights to choose and eating environment). The study took place in 3 Malaysian public hospitals, where a total of 29 patients were interviewed from each class (1st, 2nd and 3rd class) wards. The Critical Incident Technique (CIT) was incorporated with content analysis to analyse the data. A total of 180 incidents were analysed quantitatively, where more negative incidents (n= 102, 56.7%) in comparison to positive incidents (n=78, 43.3%) were identified. Chi-square analysis indicated that there is a relationship between the incidents that elicited positive or negative emotions and food provision factors. The findings provided understanding about elicitation of emotions, and established emotion as a powerful factor on their food consumption.