Clinical Nutrition: inadequate teaching in medical school

Background and Aim: The teaching of Clinical Nutrition (CN) is frequently neglected in Medical Schools, though many official institutions strongly recommend its incorporation in their curricula. This work aimed to assess CN knowledge among final-year medical students and final-year dietology diploma students. Methods and Results: We compared the performances of final-year Medical School students who did and who did not take the CN course and final-yens dietology students in a computer-based multiple choice question examination related to core CN competencies that primary-care physicians and dieticians should know and be able to put into practice. The medical students who did nor take the CN course correctly answered significantly fewer questions compared with those who did and the dietology students (both p < 0.001). There was also a difference in the percentages of who passed the test: students who did not take the course: those 18%; those who did: 77%; dietology students: 76% (p < 0.001). Conclusions: There are numerous barriers to the incorporation of nutrition in Medical School curricula. The medical school students may have achieved poorer results because dietology students followed nutrition education programs Eater in their curriculum. Our Medical School has therefore included CN education as part of its internal medicine course since 1998. (C) 2001, Medical Press.