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Med schools failing on nutrition teaching (when have they not? -

todd's comment)

 

By Stephen Daniells

 

4/12/2006 - Almost 60 per cent of US medical schools do not meet

recommendations for nutrition education for med students, producing

physicians - the first port of call for nutrition advice for many

consumers - who may have inadequate nutrition knowledge.

 

Twenty years ago the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) reported that

21 hours of education in nutrition was required but found that many

medical schools did not offer nutrition courses. The 1985 NAS report

said: "Nutrition education programs in US medical schools are largely

inadequate to meet the present and future demands of the medical

profession." A new survey, published in The American Journal of

Clinical Nutrition (Vol. 83, pp. 941S-944S), re-examined the state of

nutrition education in 106 medical schools. The two-page survey

contained 12 questions, with respondents - usually the person

responsible for the nutrition teachings - indicating in which year of

study that students were taught and in which context (eg nutrition,

physiology, biochemistry). The respondents were also asked whether

current nutrition education was sufficient or if more was needed.

"Remarkably, less than one half (41 per cent) of the responding

schools provided the minimum 25 hours or more recommended by the NAS

in 1985," said lead author Kelly Adams from the University of North

Carolina at Chapel ill. "Also surprising was the finding that 17

schools (18 per cent) required only [less than or equal to] 10 hours

of nutrition instruction," she said. The researchers also found that

during the clinical years (third to fourth year) 36 per cent of

schools offered less than five hours of teaching nutrition. Eighty-

eight per cent of the instructors questioned also indicated that the

students needed more tuition. "Thus, it appears that we are producing

a pool of physicians who feel largely unprepared to counsel their

patients about nutrition," concluded Adams. Other surveys in the

literature have reported that physicians feel unprepared to deal with

the growing problem of obesity, with 32 per cent of US adults

clinically obese. Shockingly, the number of overweight children is

reported to have tripled since 1980. "With the rising epidemic of

obesity in the US population and the knowledge that prevention is

more likely to be successful than treatment, it is clearly imperative

to ensure that medical students are adequately prepared," wrote the

researchers. Dr Daniel Fabricant, vice president of scientific

affairs for the industry association, the National Nutritional Foods

Association, applauded the authors of the study, but said that it

seemed to confirm what many in the research community have long

believed to be true. "There is an ever increasing amount of good

science that demonstrates how very important nutritive factors, like

the use of dietary supplements, are for not only maintaining health,

but in preventing disease. Based on the study, information on

nutrition, diet and supplementation cannot be accurately provided to

the public by their physicians, which means that the public, who

works longer hours and has more demands on their time than ever,

making it harder to find good information, suffers the most."

Fabricant said that the NNFA hoped that such studies would be the

"impetus for major wholesale changes in medical education to

implement curriculum and instructors that provide the tools to best

serve the public with. Additionally, if the majority of physicians

are not properly educated on these topics is it really surprising

that many stories appearing in journals/publications geared towards

physicians are misinterpreted and sometimes misleading?" The American

Medical Association refused to comment on the study since it was

published in a non-AMA journal.

 

primary source:

Adams KM, Lindell KC, Kohlmeier M, Zeisel SH. 2006. Status of

nutrition education in medical schools. AJCN 83: 941S-944S

Caldecott

todd

www.toddcaldecott.com