[Training in dietetics and nutrition from the point of view of the primary care physician].
OBJECTIVE
Professionals in primary health care have to face a large number of patients with pathologies arising out of nutritional and dietary disorders as well as cope with society's growing interest in such issues. For this reason, we have attempted to assess the extent of the knowledge in questions of nutrition and dietetics that primary health care doctors feel they have received in comparison with what they might have considered necessary, as well as assess the capacity that these doctors feel they have to cope with clinical situations requiring a knowledge of nutrition. SCOPE AND SUBJECTS: 250 doctors working in Primary Health Care and belonging to the Tarragona Province Medical Association.


METHODS
Participants received a self-administered questionnaire in which they had to: a) answer closed questions on their sense of clinical ability to handle dietary and nutritional problems; b) give a score for the importance that 62 previously-defined subjects should have in their general medical training; and c) give a score for the attention paid to these topics during their undergraduate training.


RESULTS
36 doctors (age: 38.6 +/- 10 years) with an average accumulated experience in medicine of 12.5 +/- 9.2 years replied to the survey. Respondents reported that 42.5 +/- 25% of their patients required nutritional or dietary action and only 28 +/- 24% receive the same. As for their undergraduate training in nutrition, 19.4% of them considered it to be non-existent and 58.4% described it as insufficient. Respondents reported little ability to handle different clinical situations, particularly involving the identification of patients requiring secondary vitamin therapy or nutritional support and the prescription of low lactose diets. Except for the area of biochemistry and nutritional physiology, respondents reported a great discrepancy between the attention that should have been given during their undergraduate years to the subjects proposed and the training they really received, particularly in questions of clinical dietetics, diet and the prevention of disease as well as nutritional support in disease.


CONCLUSIONS
The undergraduate training in questions of dietetics and nutrition is clearly seen to be scant according to primary health care physicians. This might explain in part the insufficient clinical capacity that these professionals feel they have in such matters and the high percentage of patients who do not receive the nutritional and dietary attention these doctors feel is necessary.
Flores
S
S
Unitat de Nutrició Humana, Facultat de Medicina i Ciènces de la Salut de Reus, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, España.
García-Lorda
P
P
Munné
C
C
Salas-Salvadó
J
J
D002983:Clinical Competence; D004046:Dietetics / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D052756:Nutritional Sciences / Q000193:education*; D011320:Primary Health Care