Priorities for nutrition content within a medical school curriculum: a national consensus of medical educators. American Society for Clinical Nutrition Committee on Medical/Dental School and Residency Nutrition Education.

Two studies, one using a questionnaire completed by 40 medical school curriculum administrators and 178 nutrition educators, the other using a workshop for 100 medical-nutrition educators, were conducted in 1988 by the American Society for Clinical Nutrition. The goal of these investigations was to formulate recommendations for the number of hours that should be devoted to teaching nutrition in a medical school and to obtain a consensus on the relative importance of specific nutrition topics to be included in the medical curriculum. The results indicate close agreement between curriculum administrators and nutrition educators on the time that should be devoted to nutrition coursework and the relative importance of nutrition topic areas. The value of these findings is that specific nutrition topic areas that deserve relatively high (and low) priorities in the curriculum have now been identified. This is particularly valuable information for medical educators in institutions that have few curriculum hours available for teaching nutrition.