Nutrition Competencies in Health Professionals' Education and Training: A New Paradigm

Abstract

Most health care professionals are not adequately trained to address diet and nutrition-related issues with their patients, thus missing important opportunities to ameliorate chronic diseases and improve outcomes in acute illness. In this symposium, the speakers reviewed the status of nutrition education for health care professionals in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Nutrition education is not required for educating and training physicians in many countries. Nutrition education for the spectrum of health care professionals is uncoordinated, which runs contrary to the current theme of interprofessional education. The central role of competencies in guiding medical education was emphasized and the urgent need to establish competencies in nutrition-related patient care was presented. The importance of additional strategies to improve nutrition education of health care professionals was highlighted. Public health legislation such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act recognizes the role of nutrition, however, to capitalize on this increasing momentum, health care professionals must be trained to deliver needed services. Thus, there is a pressing need to garner support from stakeholders to achieve this goal. Promoting a research agenda that provides outcome-based evidence on individual and public health levels is needed to improve and sustain effective interprofessional nutrition education.

An Analysis of California Pharmacy and Medical Students’ Dietary and Lifestyle Practices

“…Nutrition education in health care professional programs has been a topic of intense discussion in recent years. 8,12,13,38 In a 2010 national survey of 105 accredited US medical schools, an average 19.6 hours of required nutrition instruction was delivered over the course of four years of training, with most of this instruction delivered in the first two years. While programs differed in how nutrition education was provided, only 20% was delivered within a dedicated nutrition course, with the remainder integrated in the curriculum (36%), clinical practice (15%), basic science courses (24%) or other (6%).…”

“…We also investigated whether students adhered to behaviors consistent with current dietary and exercise guidelines 14,15 and explored potential barriers to adopting a healthy lifestyle. Given the limited exposure of health care professional students to required nutrition curriculum, 13,16 we hypothesized that the dietary practices of pharmacy and medical students in this study would not meet current dietary and lifestyle guidelines, and that lack of time and nutritional knowledge would be the main impediments to healthful habits in these individuals.…”

“…12,13 The purpose of this study was to survey students enrolled in pharmacy and medical programs across California regarding their own dietary and lifestyle practices. We also investigated whether students adhered to behaviors consistent with current dietary and exercise guidelines 14,15 and explored potential barriers to adopting a healthy lifestyle.…”

University Education in Human Nutrition: The Italian Experience—A Position Paper of the Italian Society of Human Nutrition

“…As already observed in other countries [8][9][10][11][12][13], there is still uncertainty in Italy with regard to how and to which extent human nutrition should be taught in the different university degrees. In the ministerial decrees that define the general criteria for establishing university degrees [4,7] indications about education in human nutrition are sometimes detailed, but usually little more than mentioned or even only implied.…”

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“…Es sollten unproblematisch ▶ Screeningunterlagen als Hardcopy oder digital, ▶ Messverfahren für ein detailliertes Assessment, ▶ ein geeignetes Angebot an Kostformen und Nährstofflösungen sowie Materialien für eine künstliche Ernährung verfügbar sein. Die für die einzelnen Schritte zuständigen Mitarbeiter müssen ausreichend geschult sein, um ein effizientes und situationsadä-quates Vorgehen zu gewährleisten, da bei Ärzten und Pflegenden in der Regel erkennbare Defizite in der Ausbildung und im Kenntnisstand zu ernährungsmedizinischen Konzepten bestehen [37]. Um den Schulungsaufwand zur Erlangung des für die unterschiedlichen Aufgaben erforderlichen Fachwissens auf die Inzidenz der Probleme abzustimmen, kann es sinnvoll sein, ein 2-stufiges Konzept anzustreben.…”