Abstract
Health professionals play an important role in educating the public about food safety risks. However, the ways this important group of educators remains up-to-date on these topics are not well defined. In this study, a national sample of dietitians employed in direct teaching of patients (n = 327) were recruited to complete a web-delivered survey designed to develop a model of factors that promote information processing and teaching in practice about food safety related to fresh vegetables. The resulting mental model demonstrates that dietitians teach fresh vegetable safety using systematic information processing to intellectually understand new information, but this is also associated with a gap in the dietitian’s knowledge of food safety. The juxtaposition of an information processing model with a behavioral model provides valuable new insights about how dietitians seek, acquire and translate/transfer important information to move patients toward a higher goal of food safety. The study also informs food safety educators as they formulate teaching strategies that are more effective than other approaches at promoting behavior change.
Highlights
In Europe and the United States (US), the public ranks trust in health professionals, followed by food safety authorities and university scientists, as important when evaluating sources of food safety information [1,2,3]
This study focused on foodborne illnesses (FBI) and information processing behavior associated with teaching fresh vegetable safety because dietitians prize fresh vegetables as a major source of fiber, vitamins and minerals, and because they are traditionally strong advocates for consuming fresh vegetables [11]
This study is third in a series to explore if health professionals are influenced by personal beliefs and experience with topics such as foodborne illness, or if they are independently influenced by professional concern for the health status of their patients? We have previously reported knowledge, information sources and training used by dietitians [21,22] that most registered dietitians use to teach patients about the safety of fresh vegetables as potential sources of invasive foodborne pathogens [12]
Summary
In Europe and the United States (US), the public ranks trust in health professionals, followed by food safety authorities and university scientists, as important when evaluating sources of food safety information [1,2,3]. A series of qualitative studies with highly-susceptible patient groups in the US queried where patients wanted to find food safety information that related to them and their condition [5,6,7,8]. Participants in these studies wanted credible information from trusted sources, and health care providers were the information source they preferred. The participants only occasionally mentioned other sources, such as web sites that reported medical information (for example, WebMD [9])
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