A Novel Nutrition Medicine Education Model: the Boston University Experience

Abstract

Most deaths in the United States are preventable and related to nutrition. Although physicians are expected to counsel their patients about nutrition-related health conditions, a recent survey reported minimal improvements in nutrition medicine education in US medical schools in the past decade. Starting in 2006, we have developed an educational plan using a novel student-centered model of nutrition medicine education at Boston University School of Medicine that focuses on medical student-mentored extracurricular activities to develop, evaluate, and sustain nutrition medicine education. The medical school uses a team-based approach focusing on case-based learning in the classroom, practice-based learning in the clinical setting, extracurricular activities, and a virtual curriculum to improve medical students' knowledge, attitudes, and practice skills across their 4-y period of training. We have been using objectives from the NIH National Academy Awards guide and tools from the Association of American Medical Colleges to detect new areas of nutrition medicine taught at the medical school. Although we were only able to identify 20.5 h of teaching in the preclerkship years, we observed that most preclerkship nutrition medicine objectives were covered during the course of the 4-y teaching period, and extracurricular activities provided new opportunities for student leadership and partnership with other health professionals. These observations are very encouraging as new assessment tools are being developed. Future plans include further evaluation and dissemination of lessons learned using this model to improve public health wellness with support from academia, government, industry, and foundations.

State of Nutrition Support Teams

“…Recognizing this shortcoming, several groups have implemented training programs to identify and address the nutrition knowledge gap. For example, a nutrition vertical integration group at a university in Boston was founded to review nutrition medicine in the school curriculum 37 . The group developed a novel student‐centered model of nutrition medicine education that focused on medical student–mentored extracurricular activities to develop, evaluate, and sustain nutrition medicine education.…”

Untitled

“…Studies carried out with students of Medicine in North America were successful in showing how unprepared they were regarding nutrition education, which led to proposals of curriculum adjustments. [1][2][3] In two other studies, with medical residents of departments of Internal Medicine, only 11-14% felt they were adequately trained to…”

“…[10][11][12] Potential causative factors for the lack of awareness and appropriate therapeutic intervention include the absence of formal nutritional education in graduate and postgraduate medical training programmes. [1][2][3][4] In the hospital where I work, provocation of the "nutritional thinking" is done almost daily by the Clinical Nutrition team to the attending physicians. Through a periodic nutritional assessment and follow-up of hospitalized patients, the determination of the protein-calories needs is made and in a daily round with multidisciplinary team, the capacity of the patients to obtain adequate nutritional intake by oral, enteral or parenteral dosing is discussed in order to avoid or to treat disease-related malnutrition.…”

Nutrition of student population

“…23,24 Neophodno je u školama izvršiti reorganizaciju kurikuluma, u cilju poboljšanja zdravstvenog obrazovanja. 25,26 Jedan od načina je održavanje bloka predavanja u prve dve godine na studijama medicine, u kojima bi ishrana bila integralni deo. Moduli učenja predviđaju udžbenike, elektronske medije i polaganje ispita, dok studenti treba da shvate značaj pravilne ishrane, fizičke aktivnosti, prikupljanja antropometrijskih mera, izračunavanja indeksa telesne mase, i tumačenja relevantnih laboratorijskih analiza.…”