Narrator: This is Science Today. It's been found that about a third of the 1.6 million nursing home residents in this country may suffer from malnutrition and dehydration. This disturbing finding was part of a University of California, San Francisco study, in which one of the researchers, Charlene Harrington, called for better training and more staffing in nursing homes.

Harrington: On average, there's only three and half hours in total per resident of nursing care and that means that it's a little more than an hour of nursing per shift. So that, we think, is simply not adequate.

Narrator: Harrington says a big problem that's been identified is there's not enough staff to feed the residents.

Harrington: A number of residents have been dying of malnutrition and dehydration and that's really because there's no one there. They make take a tray in and set it in front of the residents and then just walk out because they have fifteen or even twenty residents to feed. And we're saying they shouldn't have more than two to three residents to feed. And so you need a lot more extra staff during mealtime hours.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.