Orientation of medical undergraduates to community nutrition

 

The prevalence of non-communicable diseases is increasing and diet is an important risk factor for it. This is less recognized in the medical curriculum and even though it is there, it is presented unsystematically.

 

Objective: We studied theresponse to an ‘innovative method of teaching nutrition’ to the undergraduates and assessed their perspective of the facilitating and hindering elements.

 

Methodology: The nutrition model was applied to semester iv students at our institute. A session planning guide was drawn initially and short group interactive sessions were given including briefing, demonstrations and field visits followed by diet calculation and inference about the consumption of the concerned family. Feedback was taken from students and analysis was performed.

 

Results: The majority of the responses were, learning the basics of Interviewing (72%), problem based assessment of Balanced diet (53%), social determinants of nutritional diseases (60%). The facilitating points stated were development of interviewing skills, community orientation, reasoning abilities, planning balanced diet for one-self etc. and still more of practical sessions were suggested to be included in the guide.

 

Conclusion: Our method of teaching nutrition was well accepted by students. They understood the key concepts and could apply them to problems based on social scenarios.