Abstract
Purpose. Describe nutrition education at US colleges of osteopathic medicine; determine if it meets recommended levels. Method. We surveyed 30 US colleges of osteopathic medicine (US COM) with a four-year curriculum about the amount and form of required nutrition education during the 2012/13 academic year. The online survey asked about hours of required nutrition across all 4 years and also in what types of courses this instruction occurred. We performed descriptive statistics to analyze the data. Results. Twenty-six institutions (87% response rate) completed the survey. Most responding US COM (22/26, 85%) do not meet the recommended minimum 25 hours of nutrition education; 8 (31%) provide less than half as much. Required nutrition instruction is largely confined to preclinical courses, with an average of 15.7 hours. Only 7 of the 26 responding schools report teaching clinical nutrition practice, providing on average 4.1 hours. Conclusions. Most US COM are inadequately preparing osteopathic physicians for the challenges they will face in practice addressing the nutritional concerns of their patients. Doctors of osteopathy cannot be expected to properly treat patients or guide the prevention of cardiovascular disease, obesity, cancer, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome if they are not trained to identify and modify the contributing lifestyle factors.
Highlights
Seven of the top 10 causes of death in the US are chronic diseases [1]
Schools and colleges accredited by the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation (COCA) that had graduated a class of students by the summer of 2013 were surveyed by emailing nutrition educators and curriculum administrators
In light of the ongoing obesity and diabetes epidemics and morbidity and mortality related to these conditions, ensuring that physicians are ready to address the nutritional aspects of patient care seems essential
Summary
Seven of the top 10 causes of death in the US are chronic diseases [1] Most of those (heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes) have a strong nutrition component as a contributing factor, with risk increasing as BMI or waist circumference increases. Nutrition and lifestyle treatment strategies are integral to the care of patients with obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer, as well as a multitude of other conditions, including anemia, malnutrition, gastrointestinal disease, and kidney disease. It is critically important that physicians understand how to prevent and treat nutrition-related conditions by separating high quality nutrition evidence from quackery to complement patient care needs and help reduce the high rates of lifestyle-related morbidity and mortality. Proper nutrition care improves patient outcomes and reduces costs [5]; without evidence-based nutrition education for physicians professional in training, there is no guarantee that every practitioner will obtain the essential competencies [6, 7]
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