I understand a little more now why patients say, ‘I’m tired of this.’ And they eat a whole bunch of barbeque and end up in the hospital.”
SHIFTING FOCUS But the shift to more prominently em- phasize nutrition in medical school curricula is not always an easy one, often requiring a change in resources and mindset. Nor is it separate from overall changes in medical education design, educators say. Medical students at TTUHSC
School of Medicine, for instance, took the initiative to run a preventive medi- cine course based largely on nutrition education. They approached Associ- ate Dean for Academic Affairs and As- sociate Professor of Medical Educa- tion Simon Williams, PhD, about add- ing a cooking course. “But I thought: How on earth do we do that? We don’t have a kitchen to make that happen. So we are struggling with that kind of course,” he said.
Finding professionals trained in nutrition poses other barriers. Di- etitians, for instance, often have full- time jobs not tied to medical schools, and what Dr. Williams describes as the classically trained biochemist and physiologist have to rethink their teaching methods. Students, for ex- ample, also asked about converting the school’s biochemistry course into a nutrition course to enhance their education on the topic. “The biochemists aren’t particu-
larly happy with the idea, but I think it’s actually the right way to go. The reason being, it’s actually part of an overall redesign of medical education, which is moving away from providing students with what may be esoteric information to placing information in a context in which they will actu- ally use it,” Dr. Williams said. “Most students will end up practicing in en- vironments where they see individu- als at future risk or actually suffering from the effects of poor nutrition, and
if we don’t teach our students how to head that off, they will not understand why patients have those conditions.” Like most medical schools, Texas
Tech also adopted an integrated cur- riculum. But Dr. Williams wants to make sure nutrition stands out. “When topics get distributed like
that, it’s somewhat easy to lose focus on them, and the learner doesn’t nec- essarily see the focus,” he said. “So my goal is to create a curriculum that al- lows us to revisit that focus [on nutri- tion] every few months to see the im- pact on the patient populations.” Rightly so, medical students tend to focus mostly on the next big exam. “What you want their focus to be
on is, I will change the life of my fu- ture patient and what information do I need to actually do that,” Dr. Williams said. n
Amy Lynn Sorrel is associate editor of Texas Medi- cine. You can reach her by phone at (800) 880- 1300, ext. 1392, or (512) 370-1392; by fax at (512) 370-1629; or by email at
amy.sorrel@
texmed.org.
recommendation: CDC
Test everyone born from 1945-1965 for Hepatitis C
People born from 1945-1965 account for 3 out of every 4 people with Hepatitis C, and more are unaware of their infection.
l Testing only patients with elevated ALT’s may miss 50% of infection
l Hepatitis C is a leading cause of liver cancer and liver transplants
l Care and treatment can help prevent Hepatitis C-related disease and deaths
hep c ads final 7.5 X
4.75.indd 3 40 TEXAS MEDICINE November 2015
12/17/14 6:18 PM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68