Home | Back

Focus Group Meeting

Focus Group Meeting: February 21, 2001
Topic: Review of Nutrition Elective
Participants: 5 MSI and MSII

Questions and Responses:

How many of the nutrition lectures did you attend?

• All students attended either 6 or 7 of the 8 lectures in the series.
• One MSII student attended some lectures during first year and some lectures during second year.

Did you think that the nutrition elective was helpful in providing coverage of clinically relevant topics?

• Yes.
• Thought it was the most useful lecture series he had attended.

How could the nutrition elective be changed to make it more relevant to your medical studies?

• Provide step-by-step outlines for the nutrition assessment process for different diseases.
• Include more general guidelines about how to approach a patient regarding nutritional care.
• Include a lecture on general nutrition for the healthy person.
• Provide more handouts of clinically relevant material.

Are any of the lectures in the nutrition elective repetitive of material that has been covered in the basic science courses?

• Not repetitive.

Is there a better time of day or day of the week when more students would be able to attend the elective? Would you be willing to attend twice a week so that more topics could be presented?

• No.
• Noon hour lectures are the best time because of other afternoon activities.
• Students attend other electives on other days so twice a week would not work unless there were fewer electives.

Would you like to have more MD speakers or would you like to hear from clinical nutritionists?

• As long as the content is relevant to patient care and the speaker is knowledgeable about the topic, it does not matter if the speaker is an MD, a Ph.D., or a clinical nutritionist.
• The delivery and content are more important than the speaker's credentials.

Are there additional topics that you would like to see included in the lecture series?

• Sports medicine.
• Eating disorders.
• Nutrition and aging; geriatrics Nutrition and development (growth).
• Practical advice about nutrition counseling - criteria of a healthy diet. (This would be very helpful for the preceptor experience)
• Food sources of nutrients - association between specific nutrients and cancer prevention; specific fatty acids and prevention of heart disease.
• Vegetarian diets and how to counsel patients on eating a vegetarian diet.
• Fad diets. (Atkins diet, etc.)

Would you be interested in having some medical nutrition materials on the web that you could access?

• Yes.
• This would be helpful for preceptorships.
• Yes.
• Summaries of the nutrition elective lectures would be helpful to refer to later rather than a paper copy.
• Yes.
• If it could provide specific guidelines for patient care, e.g. elderly patients.

Do you think Nutrition should be a required course in your curriculum?

• Nutrition should be integrated more into the basic science courses, a block in Biochemistry or a couple lectures in Pharmacology.
• A small nutrition course would be helpful or having a nutrition syllabus containing the material we need to know for patient care.
• Possibly a nutrition block at the beginning of third year when you are starting to see patients in the clinics and you have a better idea about what you need to know in nutrition or during second year.

Would it be helpful to you to have a core collection of nutrition references in the LRC?

• Yes.
• Materials on reserve in the LRC would be helpful.
• Yes.
• A nutrition syllabus or handbook that we could buy Web-based materials would be helpful for some students.

Are there other comments you would like to make about the nutrition elective?

• Would like to know whether other medical schools teach nutrition and how it is done.
• Would like to know the results of the Nutrition Attitudes Survey and the Nutrition Knowledge Pretest that were given during orientation and at the beginning of first year.
• Thought the Nutrition Knowledge Exam was indicative of their need to receive nutrition instruction and training.