National Dairy Council Award for Excellence in Medical/Dental Nutrition Education Lecture, 1995: medical-nutrition education--factors important for developing a successful program

Currently, there are no established guidelines which define the goals, the course content, or the approach to developing a successful medical-nutrition education program. The result has been great variability in the approach to teaching nutrition to medical students. A common concern among medical educators is how to teach all of the material currently known. The obvious outcome of trying to teach the constantly expanding body of facts is an increasing demand and competition for instructional time. In turn, nutrition educators have fallen into the trap of vying for more time and claiming success for their program on the basis of their acquired number of hours of instruction rather than on the demonstrated quality or effectiveness of their program. The purpose of this report is to recommend a set of goals for nutrition training of medical students and to high light those factors which appear to be most (and least) important to achieving those goals. It is my belief that the primary goal of educating medical students should be to sensitize students to the relevance of nutrition in the prevention and treatment of disease. A secondary goal should be to impart important information about nutrition. Relative to these goals, and based on previous studies and on my experience at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, I believe that two factors are critical to the success of any medical-nutrition education program: 1) demonstrated relevance of the course material to the practice of medicine, and 2) positive role modeling. Important but not critical factors include whether the course is required or elective, the content of the course, and the length of the course. Factors which are least important include whether the material is presented as a separate course or is integrated into other course work and when the course is taught in the medical curriculum.