Objetivo: Conhecer as percepções dos médicos intensivistas de um hospital escola de Belém/PA sobre terapia nutricional. Métodos: Este foi um estudo transversal, descritivo e quantitativo realizado através de um questionário adaptado. A população-alvo foi composta de médicos atuantes nas Unidades de Terapia Intensiva de um hospital escola. O processo estatístico foi realizado nos softwares: SAM (Statistical Analysis Model) e BioEstat versão 5.3. Resultados: Avaliou-se 25 médicos plantonistas das UTI’s em que 48% possuem residência médica em terapia intensiva. Do total, 68% dos médicos responderam ser a perda de peso de 10% em um mês a considerada significativa para o início do suporte nutricional no paciente grave, 80% disse iniciar a nutrição em um paciente séptico na UTI em até 48h. Em suas práticas diárias, 75% dos intensivistas responderam que costumam decidir sobre o início da dieta enteral, porém 65% concorda em parte que possui dificuldade em reconhecer pacientes em risco nutricional em terapia intensiva e graduam-se com nota média de 5,5 a respeito de conhecimentos sobre suporte nutricional. Conclusão: Logo, os intensivistas conhecem pouco sobre terapia nutricional sendo necessária a criação e instituição de um protocolo em Terapia Nutricional (TN) a ser aplicado na UTI do hospital.

Introduction: The role of nutrition in medicine has changed from a passive function, from an adjuvant therapy, to a proactive and sophisticated therapy that prevents various health problems and changes the natural history of the disease. Recent studies show up that medical education does not sufficiently and efficiently address the patient’s nutritional aspects, thus training physicians who are not confident in providing nutritional care to their patients. This study aimed to analyze and describe scientific studies that have evaluated nutrition education in medical schools, seeking within this context to find nutrition topics important for undergraduate medical education. Methods: This research was conducted through a cross-sectional, descriptive, scoping review after searching for synonyms using MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) and DeCS (Health Sciences Descriptors) tools. Results: We initially found 1.057 publications that underwent sequential screening until reaching a total of 16 articles, which achieved the scope of this research. Most articles are from the United States of America (50%), assessed a total of 860 medical students and 243 medical schools using different approaches regarding the teaching of nutrition. Final considerations: In this review, we have shown that despite several studies ratifying the well-established association between nutrition and prevention/treatment of diseases that require outpatient care, or at the hospital level, nutrition education in undergraduate medical school has not accompanied this evidence and, for many years, the subject has been underestimated. In Brazil, no studies were found on this topic with the used descriptors.

Introduction: The role of nutrition in medicine has changed from a passive function, from an adjuvant therapy, to a proactive and sophisticated therapy that prevents various health problems and changes the natural history of the disease. Recent studies show up that medical education does not sufficiently and efficiently address the patient’s nutritional aspects, thus training physicians who are not confident in providing nutritional care to their patients. This study aimed to analyze and describe scientific studies that have evaluated nutrition education in medical schools, seeking within this context to find nutrition topics important for undergraduate medical education. Methods: This research was conducted through a cross-sectional, descriptive, scoping review after searching for synonyms using MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) and DeCS (Health Sciences Descriptors) tools. Results: We initially found 1.057 publications that underwent sequential screening until reaching a total of 16 articles, which achieved the scope of this research. Most articles are from the United States of America (50%), assessed a total of 860 medical students and 243 medical schools using different approaches regarding the teaching of nutrition. Final considerations: In this review, we have shown that despite several studies ratifying the well-established association between nutrition and prevention/treatment of diseases that require outpatient care, or at the hospital level, nutrition education in undergraduate medical school has not accompanied this evidence and, for many years, the subject has been underestimated. In Brazil, no studies were found on this topic with the used descriptors.