Medical schools should be prioritising nutrition and lifestyle education
Would you expect a junior doctor to be confident giving basic advice and care for the most common and fatal diseases? Of course you would. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines state that a first line intervention for diabetes, obesity, and high cholesterol is to give ‘lifestyle advice’—but this phrase is so vague that it is left up to doctors and patients to define it and, potentially, ignore it.

In 2008 and 2009, more than 75% of American junior physicians felt inadequately trained to counsel patients on diet and physical activity.1 The picture is reportedly similar in the UK.2 In Tomorrow’s Doctors, the General Medical Council requires qualifying medical students to understand the role of diet in health promotion and disease prevention, which includes being nutritionally competent. Internationally, this knowledge is lacking in medical training. Just 27% of US medical schools provided the agreed minimum of 25 hours of nutrition education in 2008.3 A recent study of European medical schools was slightly more optimistic, suggesting that nutrition education was a requirement in 68.8% of …
Nutrition training in medical and other health professional schools in West Africa: the need to improve current approaches and enhance training effectiveness.
Background Health professionals play a key role in the delivery of nutrition interventions. Improving the quality of nutrition training in health professional schools is vital for building the necessary human resource capacity to implement effective interventions for reducing malnutrition in West Africa. This study was undertaken to assess the current status of nutrition training in medical, nursing and midwifery schools in West Africa. Design Data were collected from 127 training programs organized by 52 medical, nursing, and midwifery schools. Using a semi-structured questionnaire, we collected information on the content and distribution of nutrition instruction throughout the curriculum, the number of hours devoted to nutrition, the years of the curriculum in which nutrition was taught, and the prevailing teaching methods. Simple descriptive and bivariate analyses were performed. Results Nutrition instruction occurred mostly during the first 2 years for the nursing (84%), midwifery (87%), and nursing assistant (77%) programs and clinical years in medical schools (64%). The total amount of time devoted to nutrition was on average 57, 56, 48, and 28 hours in the medical, nursing, midwifery, and nursing assistant programs, respectively. Nutrition instruction was mostly provided within the framework of a dedicated nutrition course in nursing (78%), midwifery (87%), and nursing assistant programs (100%), whereas it was mainly embedded in other courses in medical schools (46%). Training content was heavily weighted to basic nutrition in the nursing (69%), midwifery (77%), and nursing assistant (100%) programs, while it was oriented toward clinical practice in the medical programs (64%). For all the programs, there was little focus (<6 hours contact time) on public health nutrition. The teaching methods on nutrition training were mostly didactic in all the surveyed schools; however, we found an integrated model in some medical schools (12%). None of the surveyed institutions had a dedicated nutrition faculty. The majority (55%) of the respondents rated nutrition instruction in their institutions as insufficient. Conclusions The results of our study reveal important gaps in current approaches to nutrition training in health professional schools in West Africa. Addressing these gaps is critical for the development of a skilled nutrition workforce in the region. Nutrition curricula that provide opportunities to obtain more insights about the basic principles of human nutrition and their application to public health and clinical practice are recommended.
Role of computer technology in medical illustration.
OBJECTIVE
Recent improvements of computer technology have resulted in a new approach to medical illustration and the scientific research process. The purpose of this manuscript is to define the current state of the art and to review paths of progress.


CONCLUSION
Using examples, we compared the process of time-intensive hand-rendered art with current art created using new computer technology. Specific emphasis was made on the newest technologies and how high-quality lower cost medical art can now be created. These newly available tools and illustration methods have resulted in a new approach to research, creation, and reproduction of medical art.