Hospital staff in Bradford have been serving up a special afternoon tea to patients as part of national Nutrition and Hydration Week.

This is the second year the campaign, which runs all this week, has taken place and health professionals at Bradford Royal Infirmary and St Luke’s Hospital are running a week of events to raise awareness among patients, carers and staff.

Bradford Teaching Hospitals’ catering facilities manager Mark Winckles said: “We decided to try to create a little bit of a party atmosphere around the wards by putting on a special afternoon tea which is an ideal way to focus everyone’s minds on the importance of food and drink.

“We’ll be serving an afternoon tea of sandwiches, soup, sausages rolls, quiche, home-made scones and fruit trifle for patients.

“This helps us to relay the three meals, two snacks message that we want to get across to older people who need to eat little and often.

“We hope that Nutrition and Hydration Week will boost talk among staff and relatives about how people can increase their calorie intake by highlighting snacks and drinks with high calorie content.”

Earlier in the week visitors to the BRI were given a taste of patients’ meals with free samplings.

Hospital staff also got the opportunity to take a tour of the BRI’s main kitchen as well as St Luke’s Hospital’s catering department.