Nutrition education on the menu for health professionals

All healthcare professionals should study a curriculum of nutrition education in order to help better support public health, a new paper has suggested.

Dr Duane Mellor, clinical dietitian and senior lecturer at Aston Medical School at Aston University and co-author of the paper, said, “At present, lifestyle-related health problems from living with obesity, through to high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and several cancers can all be linked to diet across our communities. Whereas in hospitals around a third of patients coming in can be undernourished.

“Nutrition and food play a key role to both keeping us healthy and helping to manage disease, which is why it is imperative we educate our future doctors and other health professionals about the role of nutrition in patient care.”

Researchers from Aston University, with colleagues from other universities and leading nutritional groups, worked with the Association of Nutrition (AfN) to help develop a curriculum that can be rolled out to all undergraduate medical school students with potential for modules to be taught to other healthcare professional courses.

The paper jointly published in the British Journal for Nutrition and BMJ Nutrition, Prevention and Health examined the development of a new curriculum aimed at undergraduate medical students and made recommendations on its rollout nationally, with a view to it subsequently being implemented into other healthcare courses.

The paper sets out not only the need for nutrition education and the gaps, but how it can be included as part of what is already a very busy and content-heavy curriculum. It builds on areas of the curriculum where nutrition could even be used to help teach concepts such as epidemiology and highlights how historically medical education includes only a few hours of teaching on the subject.

Dr Glenys Jones, deputy chief executive at the Association for Nutrition, who led the curriculum development project and is co-author on the paper, said, “Nutrition is a key and modifiable determinant of health and wellbeing, therefore it is essential our future medical and healthcare professionals are equipped to be able to identify when nutrition could be involved in a patient’s condition in order for this to form part of their care.

“The curriculum is not designed to turn our doctors into nutritionists or dietitians, but to give them the knowledge and skills to be able to think about whether nutrition could be playing a role and having the confidence and knowledge of who, when and how to refer on to suitable nutrition professionals when this is needed.”

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