Analysis of the knowledge on Nutrition of the future health worker: pedagogical implications

Abstract

The knowledge of food related issues is becoming increasingly important both for teachers and health workers. The priority of their field of work is to improve the healthy habits of the population that it is aimed at. This paper deals with the issue of initial training of three types of health workers, the future graduates on Medicine, Nutrition and Nursing. Once they get their syllabuses, they are given some questionnaires. The questionnaires seek to ascertain their knowledge of the requirements, their awareness of the concept of Nutrition and their eating habits. The analysis of the results leads us to some conclusions: the only group which has an adequate level to begin with, are the future graduates on Nutrition. The reason for these results may be their interest in and better knowledge on the subject. The result of these analysis also show that almost 50% of future doctors have gaps on basic matters such as knowing what and how much they should eat per day. This percentage reaches almost 70% for nursing trainees. Therefore, it seems that nutrition syllabuses for these two groups need to be revised. The conclusion will show that the same situation is reflected in the results: the group with better eating habits are those studying Nutrition. The reason for this could be the motivation and the nature of their studies.

Keywords

• educación para la salud
• educación en alimentación
• formación de sanitarios
• conocimiento pedagógico