Mapping Nutrition Competencies Across The Medical Curriculum In An Entry Level Medical Course.

It is difficult to ascertain exactly how much nutrition is taught within entry‐level medical courses. To enable mapping of nutrition competencies within the medical curriculum we developed an online‐nutrition curriculum mapping tool. The aim was assess the nutrition content of the first two years of a 4‐year post‐graduate medical course. The tool was designed to map four knowledge and five skill based nutrition competencies and captured reported occasions of delivery of nutrition content and the form and location of assessment. Information was obtained from course and subject co‐ordinators. Out of a total 1757 learning objectives 156 (9%) were reported by a subject co‐ordinator to include coverage of nutrition competencies, which was made up of 368 teaching occasions. Review of the learning objectives indicated nutrition was explicitly mentioned in 49 (31%) of the 156 reported nutrition related learning objectives. The most common nutrition competencies were: “Demonstrate an understanding of the basic sciences in relation to nutrition”, “Demonstrate knowledge on the interactive role of nutrition in health and the prevention of disease” and “Demonstrate knowledge of the evidence based dietary strategies for prevention and treatment of disease. Subject co‐ordinators report that nutrition is included to a much greater degree than is reflected in the written learning objectives. Although there appears to be a significant amount of nutrition included, further review is required to clarify the extent to which nutrition competencies are formally assessed within the curriculum to confirm adequate coverage of basic nutrition competencies.