Hidden curriculum within nutrition education in medical schools

Martin, Stephen; Sturgiss, Elizabeth; Douglas, Kirsty; Ball, Lauren

doi:10.1136/bmjnph-2019-000059

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…The place of nutrition in medical curricula has been reported as being peripheral. 52 Often nutrition may be included as cocurricular or extracurricular activities, such as student-selected components, elective courses, research projects or external opportunities through student society-led groups such as Nutritank. 53 Currently, medical doctors report rarely including nutrition in clinical care, with various cited reasons including time and confidence.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Putting nutrition education on the table: development of a curriculum to meet future doctors’ needs

Jones¹,

Macaninch²,

Mellor

et al. 2022

BMJNPH

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COVID-19 has further exacerbated trends of widening health inequalities in the UK. Shockingly, the number of years of life lived in general good health differs by over 18 years between the most and least deprived areas of England. Poor diets and obesity are established major risk factors for chronic cardiometabolic diseases and cancer, as well as severe COVID-19. For doctors to provide the best care to their patients, there is an urgent need to improve nutrition education in undergraduate medical school training. With this imperative, the Association for Nutrition established the Inter-Professional Working Group on Medical Education (AfN IPG) to develop a new, modern undergraduate nutrition curriculum for medical doctors. The AfN IPG brought together expertise from nutrition, dietetic and medical professionals, representing the National Health Service, royal colleges, medical schools and universities, government public health departments, learned societies, medical students and nutrition educators. The curriculum was developed with the key objective of being implementable through integration with the current undergraduate training of medical doctors. Through an iterative and transparent consultative process, 13 key nutritional competencies, to be achieved through mastery of 11 graduation fundamentals, were established. The curriculum to facilitate the achievement of these key competencies is divided into eight topic areas, each underpinned by a learning objective statement and teaching points detailing the knowledge and skills development required. The teaching points can be achieved through clinical teaching and a combination of facilitated learning activities and practical skills acquisition. Therefore, the nutrition curriculum enables mastery of these nutritional competencies in a way that will complement and strengthen medical students’ achievement of the General Medical Council Outcomes for Graduates. As nutrition is an integrative science, the AfN IPG recommends the curriculum is incorporated into initial undergraduate medical studies before specialist training. This will enable our future doctors to recognise how nutrition is related to multiple aspects of their training, from physiological systems to patient-centred care, and acquire a broad, inclusive understanding of health and disease. In addition, it will facilitate medical schools to embed nutrition learning opportunities within the core medical training, without the need to add in a large number of new components to an already crowded programme or with additional burden to teaching staff. The undergraduate nutrition curriculum for medical doctors is designed to support medical schools to create future doctors who will understand and recognise the role of nutrition in health. Moreover, it will equip front-line staff to feel empowered to raise nutrition-related issues with their patients as a fundamental part of enhanced care and to appropriately refer on for nutrition support with a registered nutritionist (RNutr)/registered associate nutritionist (ANutr) or a registered dietitian (RD) where this is likely to be beneficial.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Putting nutrition education on the table: development of a curriculum to meet future doctors’ needs

Jones¹,

Macaninch²,

Mellor

et al. 2022

BMJNPH

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Beyond this, other steps are urgently required to enhance medical nutrition education in Germany. New strategies beyond counting dedicated teaching hours and mapping nutrition content are required, aiming at a more contextual understanding of the situated learning that occurs for medical students [35]. Attributing a higher value to nutrition in the medical management of patients may be a key step in this process.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nutrition Coverage in Medical Licensing Examinations in Germany: An Analysis of Six Nationwide Exams

et al. 2022

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The state of nutrition education in medicine is inadequate, with nutrition-related topics being poorly integrated into lectures. Most medical students receive only a few contact hours of nutrition instruction during their entire time at medical school. Identifying potential barriers that may explain the paucity of nutritional knowledge in medical students is thus of paramount importance. The extent of nutrition coverage in the second part of Germany’s nationwide medical licensing exam is currently unknown. We addressed this issue and assessed nutrition content, as well as students’ scores, in this pivotal test prior to their graduation. We performed a post hoc analysis of six nationwide medical licensing examinations (2018–2020) undertaken by 29,849 medical students and screened 1920 multiple-choice questions for nutrition-related content. Nutrition-related questions accounted for a minority of the questions (2.1%, n = 40/1920). A considerable number of the questions (n = 19) included only a single nutrition-related answer option that was frequently incorrect and served as a distractor. About 0.5% of questions were entirely nutrition related. Despite undeniable barriers, the inclusion of additional nutrition-related examination questions could serve as an incentive to engage students and medical schools in enhancing medical nutrition education. The recently published competence-oriented learning objective catalog in Germany could play a pivotal role in this context, leading to better recognition of nutrition-related topics in medical education.

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“…The place of nutrition in medical curricula has been reported as being peripheral (52) . Often nutrition may be included as co-curricular or extracurricular activities, such as student selected components, elective courses, research projects or external opportunities through student society-led groups such as Nutritank (53) .…”

Section: Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Putting nutrition education on the table: development of a curriculum to meet future doctors’ needs

Jones¹,

Macaninch²,

Mellor³

et al. 2022

Br J Nutr

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

COVID-19 has further exacerbated trends of widening health inequalities in the UK. Shockingly, the number of years of life lived in general good health differs by over 18 years between the most and least deprived areas of England. Poor diets and obesity are established major risk factors for chronic cardiometabolic diseases and cancer, as well as severe COVID-19. For doctors to provide the best care to their patients, there is an urgent need to improve nutrition education in undergraduate medical school training. With this imperative, the Association for Nutrition established an Interprofessional Working Group on Medical Education (AfN IPG) to develop a new, modern undergraduate nutrition curriculum for medical doctors. The AfN IPG brought together expertise from nutrition, dietetic and medical professionals, representing the National Health Service (NHS), royal colleges, medical schools and universities, government public health departments, learned societies, medical students, and nutrition educators. The curriculum was developed with the key objective of being implementable through integration with the current undergraduate training of medical doctors. Through an iterative and transparent consultative process, thirteen key nutritional competencies, to be achieved through mastery of eleven graduation fundamentals, were established. The curriculum to facilitate the achievement of these key competencies is divided into eight topic areas, each underpinned by a learning objective statement and teaching points detailing the knowledge and skills development required. The teaching points can be achieved through clinical teaching and a combination of facilitated learning activities and practical skill acquisition. Therefore, the nutrition curriculum enables mastery of these nutritional competencies in a way that will complement and strengthen medical students’ achievement of the General Medical Council (GMC) Outcome for Graduates. As nutrition is an integrative science, the AfN IPG recommends that the curriculum is incorporated into initial undergraduate medical studies before specialist training. This will enable our future doctors to recognise how nutrition is related to multiple aspects of their training, from physiological systems to patient-centred care, and acquire a broad, inclusive understanding of health and disease. In addition, it will facilitate medical schools to embed nutrition learning opportunities within the core medical training, without the need to add in a large number of new components to an already crowded programme or with additional burden for teaching staff. The undergraduate nutrition curriculum for medical doctors is designed to support medical schools to create future doctors who will understand and recognise the role of nutrition in health. Moreover, it will equip frontline staff to feel empowered to raise nutrition-related issues with their patients as a fundamental part of enhanced care and to appropriately refer on for nutrition support with a registered associate nutritionist/registered nutritionist (ANutr/RNutr) or registered dietitian (RD) where this is likely to be beneficial.

show abstract

Hidden curriculum within nutrition education in medical schools

Cited by 12 publications

References 32 publications

Putting nutrition education on the table: development of a curriculum to meet future doctors’ needs

Putting nutrition education on the table: development of a curriculum to meet future doctors’ needs

Nutrition Coverage in Medical Licensing Examinations in Germany: An Analysis of Six Nationwide Exams

Putting nutrition education on the table: development of a curriculum to meet future doctors’ needs

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