Nutrition Elective Impact on Resident Competency
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Publication Date
2025
Abstract
Context/background: Nutrition is the number one risk factor contributing to death in the United States, and yet healthcare providers report not receiving ade-quate education to provide effective patient counseling. Primary care providers are perfectly situated in the healthcare continuum to provide evidence-based nutrition-al counseling to patients, as well as screen for and intervene on food insecurity. Objective: Main objective: evaluate the impact of a structured nutritional elective on Family Medicine residents’ competency regarding evidence-based nutritional counseling. Secondary objective: evaluate impact on competency screening for and intervening on food insecurity. Methods: Design: pre- and post-elective survey evaluating 5 domains on a scale of 1-5 (1 being low, 5 being high): 1) knowledge of key nutritional requirements and evidence-based recommendations, 2) comfort providing data/statistics around diet-related health complications and counseling about specific dietary needs, 3) comfort screening for food insecurity, 4) knowledge to intervene on food insecuri-ty, 5) knowledge of Providence-specific resources for food insecurity and how to access them. Setting: Providence Milwaukie Community Teaching Kitchen Participants: 4 family medicine residents from Providence Milwaukie Intervention: structed elective consisting of at least 7 half days. First half day is 4-hour online CME course through Gaples institute: Nutrition Science for Health and Longevity: What Every Physician Needs to Know. Subsequent half days spent rotating with Providence Milwaukie Teaching Kitchen, including time with Regis-tered Dietitian/Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist, Patient Navigator screening and addressing food insecurity, food pharmacy distribution, working in community garden, participating in culinary medicine classes. Results: Post-elective survey showed statistically significant improvement across all domains (all with p-values < 0.05). Averages for the following domains [pre -> post]: 1) [1.5 -> 4.5], 2) [ 1.5 -> 4], 3) [2 -> 5], 4) [2.25 -> 5], 5) [2 -> 5]. Discussion/conclusions: Nutrition is one of the most important factors affecting our patients’ health, and yet many providers do not feel adequately trained to coun-sel patients effectively. A structed nutrition elective was shown to improve family medicine resident competency providing evidence-based nutrition recommenda-tions. Secondarily, it was also shown to improve comfort screening for and knowledge of how to intervene on food insecurity.
Specialty/Research Institute
Graduate Medical Education
