The State of Nutrition Education at US Medical Schools
Journal of Biomedical Education, Vol 2015, Article ID 357627, 7 pages, http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/357627
Kelly M. Adams,1 W. Scott Butsch,2 and Martin Kohlmeier1,3
1 Department of Nutrition, School of Medicine and Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 800 Eastowne Drive, Suite 100, Chapel Hill, NC 27514, USA
2 Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Center, 50 Staniford Street, 4th Floor, Boston, MA 02114, USA
3 UNC Nutrition Research Institute, 500 Laureate Way, Kannapolis, NC 28081, USA
| 2000 | 2004 | 2008 | 2012 | |
| Schools with a required nutrition course | 35 % | 30% | 25% | 18% |
See also web
- 43 papers cited this study in Google Scholar as of Aug 2018
- Why isn’t nutrition a bigger part of conventional medical school education?
Question asked at ResearchGate in 2013
985 responses as of Aug 2018 - How Much Do Doctors Learn About Nutrition? Dec 2016
"The basic structure of medical education was put in place in 1920, long before lifestyle-related chronic disease was a major public health focus."
- - - - VitaminDWiki comments - - - -
Doctors are not compensated for providing nutrion information in the 10-20 minute visit
I am unaware of any billable code for nutrtion counselling
In fact, Doctors may have a negative incentive, since the healther the patient, the fewer the doctor's visits
see Deployment of Preventive Interventions have been proven many times, but rarely implemented – May 2018
see Curing patients is not a sustainable business model – Goldman Sachs – April 2018 - Basic nutrition knowledge of recent medical graduates entering a pediatric residency program
Nov 2016 doi: 10.1515/ijamh-2015-0019.
interns answered only 52 % of the 18 nutrtion questions correctly - Lifestyle Medicine: A Brief Review of Its Dramatic Impact on Health and Survival Permanente Journal Sept 2017
Introduction “Chronic diseases are presently the leading cause of morbidity and mortality and are responsible for most of our health care expenditure.2
Most of these chronic conditions are preventable and are the result of an unhealthy lifestyle.3
More than 80% of chronic conditions could be avoided through the adoption of healthy lifestyle recommendations.3–5
80 % of the population wants to live in a better state of health but do not know how to pursue it.6
Purpose. To assess the state of nutrition education at US medical schools and compare it with recommended instructional targets. Method. We surveyed all 133 US medical schools with a four-year curriculum about the extent and type of required nutrition education during the 2012/13 academic year.
Results. Responses came from 121 institutions (91% response rate). Most US medical schools (86/121, 71%) fail to provide the recommended minimum 25 hours of nutrition education; 43 (36%) provide less than half that much. Nutrition instruction is still largely confined to preclinical courses, with an average of 14.3 hours occurring in this context. Less than half of all schools report teaching any nutrition in clinical practice; practice accounts for an average of only 4.7 hours overall. Seven of the 8 schools reporting at least 40 hours of nutrition instruction provided integrated courses together with clinical practice sessions.
Conclusions. Many US medical schools still fail to prepare future physicians for everyday nutrition challenges in clinical practice. It cannot be a realistic expectation for physicians to effectively address obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, hospital malnutrition, and many other conditions as long as they are not taught during medical school and residency training how to recognize and treat the nutritional root causes.
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