Nutrition in Medical Studies: “Eat This!” - a Digital Teaching Concept as an Elective Subject for German Curricula

Peer reviewed / Manuscript submitted (original): 29 September 2021 / Revision accepted: 19 November 2021

Piloting a Course in Cologne

Introduction

Nutrition is essential for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases. In Germany, cases of premature death and disability due to malnutrition increased by 3.4% in the decade before 2019. Worldwide, malnutrition currently causes 8 million deaths, accompanied by enormous costs for the health care system [1]. Despite its importance, evidence-based recommendations from medical societies [2] and opportunities to induce behavioural change with health benefits [3, 4], physicians too rarely talk about nutrition in their daily routine [3, 5, 6]. Reasons may be lack of time, lack of incentives and lack of cooperation with nutrition professionals as well as professional deficits and insufficient training [5–8]. Importantly, nutrition is currently not sufficiently addressed in medical studies [9]. Medical students, however, would prefer a stronger integration of nutritional medicine (NM) into the curriculum and they see themselves in a key role in (later) creating healthy nutritional awareness in patients [10, 11].

Anglo-American studies show the need for (catching up on) nutrition topics in medical school [9, 12] and for teaching initiatives that improve competencies in nutrition counselling and NM [13, 14]. In Europe, there are studies from the UK in particular with similar results [6, 15–17]. Corresponding publications from Germany are sparse. At the University Hospital of Düsseldorf, a teaching initiative on nutrition management started as an elective subject [18]. Two studies found that questions about NM were often answered incorrectly by doctors-to-be and doctors [19, 20]. The authors advocated for more teaching about NM in medical studies. ...

Abstract

Introduction: In Germany, nutritional medicine (NM) is underrepresented in medical studies. The lecture series Eat This! (German: Iss Das!) initiated by students in Cologne is an example of how this gap can be closed.
Methods: Eat This! comprises seven online lectures (10.5 h) on NM in the clinical part of medical studies. Before and after the course, Cologne students rated the importance of NM, the range and quality of related teaching, their perceived preparation and competence, and their learning success (n = 113). Pretest data (n = 208) were compared with n = 57 students of other medical faculties.
Results: The lectures were very well attended by up to > 300 participants. The evaluation of the importance of nutrition and NM as well as of the students’ own competence and preparation for the subject increased significantly. Eat This! was evaluated as ”good” and received a teaching award at the Cologne Medical Faculty where it was perpetuated as an elective.
Conclusions: Student initiatives can be a useful strategy to promote NM in medical studies. Eat This!, for example, helps to close the existing gap. It is currently extended to a national level and is undergoing a multicentre evaluation.

Keywords: nutrition, medical studies, nutritional medicine, digital teaching, interdisciplinary

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