It has been shown that a whole food, plant-based
diet low in refined carbohydrates and animal products has been proven to reverse
coronary heart disease and protect against Type 2 diabetes and cancer. The Lyon
Mediterranean Diet Heart Study, published in 1999, showed a 72% reduction in
cardiovascular events attributed to diet. Knowing all the advantages of eating
a healthy diet, it would seem that nutrition education would be a high priority
of medical training. On average most medical school students receive only 20
hours of nutrition education. Most of which is taught with little concoction to
human diets or common disease.
In order to get specialty training
in cardiovascular disease, one must complete the performance of 10 cardioversions,
interpretation of 150 echocardiograms, and participation in 100 cardiac catheterizations.
However, there is no requirement for nutrition education. Similarly, there is a
lack of nutrition education for all internal medicine residency programs. Many
of these doctors serve as primary care physicians. Only 14% of physicians feel
they are adequately trained to provide nutrition counseling; while 61% of the general
population considers physicians to be credible sources of nutrition
information.
There are efforts to help fix this
problem. At the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, they provide free
web-based nutrition curriculum for both medical students and practicing
physicians. An interesting new strategy, Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives, combines
nutrition-related lectures and “hands-on” cooking sessions. It was successful at
three month follow-up in changing physicians’ dietary practices and their
propensity to offer nutritional counseling.
Many improvements still need to be
made, beginning even as early as pre-medical students. Requiring pre-medical
students to take a nutrition course is more applicable to their future careers
over courses such as organic chemistry. There needs to be more integration of nutrition
education into all levels of medical training from medical school, to residencies
and the continuing education of current physicians. The current rise of diseases
like cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity, demonstrate the need to emphasize
that nutrition education is no longer a garnish but is now served as a main
course.
·
Do
you feel you will receive adequate nutrition education in your medical
training?
·
Is
nutrition education even important for health care providers?
·
Do
you believe as a future health care provider we should focus on the prevention
of disease as much as we do on treating them?
Devries S, Dalen JE, Eisenberg DM. 2014. A deficiency of nutrition education in medical training. The American Journal of Medicine, cited 2014 Nov 28] 127(9): 804-806.
Devries S, Dalen JE, Eisenberg DM. 2014. A deficiency of nutrition education in medical training. The American Journal of Medicine, cited 2014 Nov 28] 127(9): 804-806.
I have personally thought about this topic as well. Being an individual who looks into my nutrition and how it affects my body I feel that I know much more than your average person about how certain food interact with your body. The part of your discussion that intrigues me is the 61% of people believe that their physician is a credible source for nutrition advice. Many people assume since they are talking to their physician that they know everything about the human body that we could possibly ask. However as many of us see as we move toward medical school and looking at their curriculum we see that there is an extreme lack of nutrition education. Think about it this way.... Would you trust an individual to manage your financial portfolio with never having a background or taking a course in economics? Probably not. Additionally look around at the obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes epidemic that is plaguing the United States currently. What is the easiest way to fix this problem? Prevention and proper diet. All of which are facets of nutrition education.
ReplyDeleteThe one question that I pose is that should we be cramming more of this information into our physicians or should we as the United States give incentives to some students to specialize in nutrition to increase the amount of dietitians in the United States so that every clinic staffs at least one?
I am part of the 61% of people who believed that my doctor is giving me sound nutrition advice. I think it is important to teach doctors about nutrition especially in the context of preventing disease. Physicians should always encourage there patients to live as healthy as possible and eating a healthy diet will improve quality of life and hopefully reduce medical complications (and costs!). I think that having doctors specialize in nutrition is a great idea in theory but a nutritionist is a luxury that many people can't afford or don't think is necessary. No matter how active and healthy someone may be they should still meet with a nutritionist once in a while to make sure all of there dietary needs are being satisfied, if they can't afford or don't want to waste the time going to a nutritionist it would be best if there doctor could accurately advise them. If a nutritionist were covered by health insurance it would be a more practical idea since more people would go visit them.
ReplyDeleteI believe nutrition is very important to the overall health of an individual and I am very surprised that medical schools are not providing their students with the adequate amount of information about nutrition. I especially think nutrition is important now because obesity rates have increased exponentially as well as type 2 diabetes. I believe that as a health care provider, they should provide the nutritional requirements to their patients in order to get their patients healthy. I do think we should put a lot more focus on the prevention of disease rather than treating it. For example, several obese people get their stomachs stapled to help them lose weight and become healthy but I know many of the people that get this surgery fall right back into their old ways and never get healthy like they were intending to. This is just one example of how treatment comes before prevention. One thing that is hard about nutrition is there are constantly changing values of how much one should eat or each food and there are several diets/life style changes that think their nutrition plan is the best. This leads to difficulty in providing the patient with the best nutrition. Even though there are some difficulties when providing one with a good nutrition plan I still believe health care providers should be educated on nutrition. My one question is, what percentages of medical schools do require a nutrition class and where are these schools located around the country?
ReplyDeleteI definitely think physicians should be required to take nutrition classes. Part of the reason I want to go to an osteopathic medical school is because I feel like I will get more of this preventative, well-rounded type of training. As a physician I want to be prepared to answer patient’s questions about their diet and what changes they should make. It would be good to train more students as nutritionists, but I agree with Kayla that many people can’t afford to specifically see a nutritionist. I know at some grocery stores back in Iowa they have nutritionists on staff to help label health foods better, offer easy recipe ideas, and generally be available to people. I think this is a great resource for people who maybe can’t see a nutritionist regularly. Personally, I wish my doctor’s office offered tests like nutritional panels to see vitamin and mineral levels to identify where you might be lacking. I believe nutrition will be more and more important in healthcare moving forward in our country.
ReplyDeleteI'll jump on the more nutrition education bandwagon! But then again, it interests me and I see it being part of my practice later on. If I specialized in radiology, however, I'm not sure a class on nutrition would be quite as useful. It might be interesting to note that a licensed naturopathic physician (ND) is educated in all of the same basic sciences as an MD, but also studies clinical nutrition, homeopathic medicine, botanical medicine, psychology, and counseling. NDs take rigorous professional board exams as well, but only 17 states, the District of Columbia, and the United States territories of Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands have licensing or regulation laws for naturopathic doctors. I think it's an uphill battle for NDs to gain recognition, but one I fully support!
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