To develop and administer a questionnaire to determine what factors may be associated with app use (including frequency of use, reasons to recommend to clients/patients, perceived effectiveness on ...health, health aspects used, features, and types of apps) by clinicians working in diabetes and weight management patient care settings.
The Clinician Apps Survey was developed and contained 3 question domains (smartphone apps use, behavior theory in counseling sessions, and demographics) to explore frequency, types, preferred features, benefits/barriers of using apps, counseling techniques used, and clinician demographics. Clinicians (n = 719) were recruited to complete the online survey through 4 dietetics and diabetes professional groups. Clinician use and preferences for health-related apps for personal reasons and in patient care settings were determined, and comparisons were made between high and non-app users. Descriptive statistics were used with current practices and attitudes about apps. Chi-square test of independence compared those using apps both personally and professionally (app enthusiasts) vs those with no app use.
There were more app enthusiasts (53%; n = 380) than non-app users (20%; n = 145). Whereas 68% recommended pen/paper methods for diet and physical activity monitoring, 62% recommended apps. Most agreed that apps were superior to traditional methods for patients to track dietary intake (62%) and physical activity (58%), make better food choices (34%), lose weight (45%), and track blood glucose (43%). App enthusiasts used the American Association of Diabetes Educators self-care guidelines (P = .001) and advanced counseling techniques (eg, motivational interviewing) more often than did non-app users (P < .004). Apps most frequently recommended to clients were MyFitnessPal (n = 425), CalorieKing (n = 356), and Fitbit (n = 312).
Health-related smartphone apps are being widely used and recommended to patients with diabetes and obesity by clinicians for self-monitoring of dietary and physical activity behaviors. Furthermore, many clinicians believe that these types of tracking apps may improve patient outcomes compared with traditional methods of monitoring dietary and physical activity behaviors.
Nutrition and food literacy are two important concepts that are often used interchangeably, but they are not synonymous. Nutrition refers to the study of how food affects the body, while food ...literacy refers to the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to make informed decisions about food and its impact on health. Despite the growing awareness of the importance of food literacy, food illiteracy remains a global issue, affecting people of all ages, backgrounds, and socioeconomic status. Food illiteracy has serious health implications as it contributes to health inequities, particularly among vulnerable populations. In addition, food literacy is a complex and multidisciplinary field, and there are numerous challenges to health communication that must be addressed to effectively promote food literacy and improve health outcomes. Addressing food illiteracy and the challenges to health communication is essential to promote health equity and improve health outcomes for all populations.
The metabolic dietitian/nutritionist (hereafter ‘dietitian’) plays an essential role in the nutritional management of patients with phenylketonuria (PKU), including those on pegvaliase. Currently, ...more educational support and clinical experience is needed to ensure that dietitians are prepared to provide optimal nutritional management and counselling of pegvaliase-treated patients.
Via a face-to-face data-review meeting, followed by a virtual consolidation meeting, a group of expert dietitians and one paediatrician discussed and developed a series of recommendations on the nutritional evaluation and management of patients receiving pegvaliase. The consensus group consisted of 10 PKU experts: six dietitians and one paediatrician from Europe and three dietitians from the US. One European and three US dietitians had experience with pegvaliase-treated patients.
The consensus group recommended that a physician, dietitian and nurse are part of the pegvaliase treatment team. Additionally, a psychologist/counsellor should be included if available. Practical proposals for the nutritional evaluation of pegvaliase-treated patients at baseline, during the induction and titration phases and for long-term maintenance were developed. The consensus group suggested assessment of blood Phe at least monthly or every 2 weeks in the event of low blood Phe (i.e., blood Phe <30 μmol/L). It may be appropriate to increase blood Phe monitoring when adjusting protein intake and/or pegvaliase dose. It was recommended that natural protein intake is increased by 10–20 g increments if blood Phe concentrations decrease to <240 μmol/L in patients who are not meeting the dietary reference intake for natural protein of 0.8 g/kg. It was proposed that with pegvaliase treatment blood Phe levels could be maintained <240 μmol/L but more evidence on the safety of achieving physiological blood Phe levels is necessary before any recommendation on the lower blood Phe target can be given. Finally, both patients and dietitians should have access to educational resources to optimally support patients receiving pegvaliase.
This practical road map aims to provide initial recommendations for dietitians monitoring patients with PKU prescribed pegvaliase. Given that practical experience with pegvaliase is still limited, nutritional recommendations will require regular updating once more evidence is available and clinical experience evolves.
In the clinical field of food allergies, dietary management towards patients is done inadequately. One plausible reason for this is the possible deficiency of food allergy education during the ...training courses for registered dietitians. This time, we will investigate the actual situations of food allergy education practiced in the training courses of registered dietitians, and reveal the point at issue.
We conducted a factual survey via mailing method towards registered dietitian and dietitian nutritionist training facilities throughout the whole country. The survey items include the existence of lectures or practical trainings about food allergies, the pre-graduate education of food allergies, and much more.
We got answers from 213 facilities (collection rate 75%). Lectures about food allergies were conducted in 96% of the facilities, and the median of the lecture hour was 210 minutes. Similarly, practical trainings were conducted in 74% of the facilities, and the median was 90 minutes. The rate of people who strongly feel the need for food allergy education was 49%, and the rate for people who felt it was 50%. However, the rate of an ideal educational condition was 32%, and the rate of people who didn't have any plans of increasing the number of lectures and practical trainings were 82%. The major reasons for this were, the crammed condition of the curriculums, and the difficulties conducting lectures and practical trainings that span over several fields of expertise.
In the training courses of registered dietitians, the practice of food allergy education is hardly adequate, and the educational sites seem to recognize the problem, but they are also pessimistic regarding the improvement of the situation due to the difficult problems that were revealed in this survey. From now on, it is strongly expected for the government and its people to work together to improve the current situation.
Introducción: Uno de los mayores desafíos durante la pandemia por COVID-19 fue llevar adelante una adecuada valoración nutricional, al tiempo que el riesgo de desarrollar desnutrición asociada a la ...enfermedad fue un motivo más para realizar tamizaje nutricional tan pronto fuese posible. El objetivo del presente estudio fue describir los cambios que se operaron en la modalidad de valoración nutricional de pacientes adultos hospitalizados como consecuencia de la pandemia por COVID-19, durante el año 2020, en establecimientos de salud con internación general, públicos y privados, de Argentina.
Metodología: Estudio descriptivo, observacional, transversal. Muestreo no aleatorio, por conveniencia. Se obtuvieron datos de 60 instituciones, a través de la aplicación de un cuestionario autoadministrado de diseño propio dirigido a Licenciados en Nutrición. Los datos fueron procesados con VCCStat – Beta3.0®. Se calcularon porcentajes, medidas de tendencia central y dispersión, e IC95%.
Resultados: El 40% (IC95% 26,1-55,6) de las instituciones que realizaban tamizaje nutricional rutinariamente lo suspendieron en el caso de pacientes con COVID-19 presunto o confirmado, y 16% (IC95% 5,9-41,2) lo suspendieron para todos los pacientes internados. Se implementó la atención mediante interconsulta en 18 de las 50 Instituciones que solían brindar atención universal. En el 53% (IC95% 40,1-66,1) de los establecimientos se implementó la consulta remota para la atención de pacientes aislados por COVID-19, y en el 22% (IC95% 12,5-34,5) se recolectó la información a través de otro miembro del Equipo de Salud. A fines de 2021, sólo el 57% de los establecimientos (IC95% 43,3-69,2) habían retomado la forma de trabajo previa al año 2020. El impacto de estos cambios fue percibido como negativo por el 35% de los respondedores (IC95% 23,4-48,5).
Conclusiones: Los principales cambios operados durante 2020 incluyeron la suspensión de las tareas de tamizaje nutricional, la implementación de la atención mediante interconsulta y el uso de formas remotas de atención.
RESUMEN La telemedicina, a través del uso de plataformas de videoconferencias por Internet, se encuentra cada vez más extendida en Chile, debido a la pandemia de COVID-19 y las restricciones para ...controlar el virus. El nutricionista no es ajeno a esta situación y ha tenido que modificar las consultas para dar respuesta a esta nueva realidad. Sin embargo, no existe suficiente información respecto al nivel de satisfacción de los usuarios de la telemedicina, que emplea este profesional. El objetivo de la investigación fue describir la percepción de la satisfacción usuaria relacionada con las consultas nutricionales mediante la telemedicina, realizadas durante la pandemia. Se realizó un estudio observacional, descriptivo y transversal. Se reclutaron 62 pacientes de Santiago de Chile, quienes fueron atendidos en una consulta nutricional por videoconferencia. Se diseñó un cuestionario online constituido por seis ítems para determinar la aceptabilidad de la consulta nutricional por telemedicina. El rol del nutricionista en la consulta nutricional por videoconferencia tuvo un grado de satisfacción superior al 70 %. El 62,9 % de los encuestados prefiere que la consulta nutricional sea combinada. Solo el 50 % señala que la plataforma de videoconferencia zoom favorece la relación nutricionista-paciente. La consulta nutricional por telemedicina permite controlar el estado nutricional del paciente sin necesidad de asistir de manera presencial, lo que mejora el acceso a la atención. Existe un nivel elevado de aceptación por parte de los pacientes que han recibido atención nutricional por telemedicina.
Aim
This review aimed to synthesise the evidence on the effectiveness of dietary interventions targeting adolescents (>13 years) and adults living in rural or remote Australia.
Methods
Six electronic ...databases were searched to identify dietary interventions undertaken in rural or remote communities. Studies were included if they utilised intervention and control comparisons or pre and post assessment of diet‐related outcomes. If studies included metropolitan populations, dietary outcome measures had to be provided separately for rural data.
Results
In total, 14 articles from 12 unique studies met the criteria for inclusion and together provided incomplete coverage across all states of Australia, included intervention studies targeted diet to address obesity, cardiovascular disease, and high blood pressure or diabetes. No studies were focussed on reducing community malnutrition. All studies, with one exception, focussed specifically on rural adults, no interventions specifically targeted adolescents in rural areas. Only two studies documented the involvement of a dietitian in intervention development or delivery. All studies produced a significant outcome for either dietary intake, body mass index, waist circumference, or diet related biomedical risk factors for individuals located in rural or remote areas of Australia.
Conclusion
Dietary interventions in rural Australia are under‐studied, especially among the adolescent population. This is despite the high level of preventable diet‐related disease burden in rural and remote Australia. Existing evidence shows promise in improving dietary intakes, but further, large scale intervention research, with the involvement of dietitians, is urgently needed to improve the health of rural communities.
RESUMEN La educación alimentaria nutricional es la combinación de estrategias educativas, acompañadas de apoyos ambientales, diseñadas para facilitar la adopción voluntaria de elecciones alimentarias ...que conducen a un estado óptimo de salud y bienestar. La educación alimentaria nutricional tiene tres componentes: 1) motivación, 2) acción y 3) ambiente. Para elegir la técnica de educación adecuada para cada persona, se deben considerar las características psicoemocionales individuales, especialmente las motivaciones para el cambio y el tipo de personalidad, ya que ambos han mostrado ser buenos predictores de la conducta alimentaria. Dentro de los recursos educativos posibles de utilizar para realizar la educación en alimentación nutricional se encuentran indicaciones verbales, material escrito, uso de internet, dispositivos portátiles, aplicaciones de teléfonos inteligentes, e incluso la clase de cocina. La evidencia demuestra que la educación alimentaria nutricional impacta favorablemente la adherencia a las intervenciones nutricionales, lo cual a la vez se ve reflejado en efectos positivos en la salud.
ABSTRACT Objective To make a critical and comparative analysis of curricula of Brazilian and Portuguese higher education institutions in terms of clock hours and semester distribution of food and ...nutrition education in undergraduate nutrition programs, also assessing the main differences among courses classified into thematic axes and professional practice areas. Methods The curricula of fifteen Brazilian and eleven Portuguese nutrition programs were collected and classified into thematic axes and professional practice areas with the method of Document Analysis. Next, we performed statistical analysis regarding the total and proportional clock hours of instruction and their semester distribution to assess the differences between the two countries. The variables of interest were the hours of Food and Nutrition Education and their semester distribution. Results The Food and Nutrition Education axis was the second smallest one, with statistically significant differences among the axes (2.2% of curricula; p<0.001). Brazilian higher education institutions showed greater total clock hours of Food and Nutrition Education (p=0.018), Human and Social Sciences (p=0.003), Public Health (p<0.001), as well as a wider dispersion and lower relative weighted mean for the semester offering of courses (p=0.004) of Food and Nutrition Education courses. Portuguese higher education institutions showed greater total and proportional clock hours of instruction for Exact Sciences (p<0.005; p=0.001, respectively) and more proportional hours of Biologic and Health Sciences (p<0.001). Conclusion Our study found a reduced presence of the area of Food and Nutrition Education in the undergraduate training of nutritionists in both countries.
RESUMO Objetivo Realizar uma análise crítica e comparativa das horas de instrução e distribuição semestral da Educação Alimentar e Nutricional nos cursos de graduação em nutrição. Além disso, analisar as principais diferenças entre disciplinas classificadas em Eixos Temáticos e em Áreas De Atuação Profissional de currículos de cursos de nutrição das Instituições de Ensino Superior brasileiras e portuguesas. Métodos Os currículos de quinze instituições brasileiras e onze portuguesas foram coletados, e o método Análise Documental foi usado para classificar as disciplinas de cada curso em Eixos Temáticos e em Áreas de Prática Profissional. Em seguida, foi feita uma análise estatística das horas de aula totais e proporcionais e do semestre de oferta, para verificar a diferença entre os países. As horas de instrução de Educação Alimentar e Nutricional e a distribuição semestral foram as variáveis de interesse. Resultados O eixo Educação Alimentar e Nutricional foi o segundo menor, com diferença estatisticamente significativa entre eixos (2,2% dos currículos; p<0,001). As Instituições de Ensino Superior brasileiras apresentaram maior carga horária absoluta para Educação Alimentar e Nutricional (p=0,018), Ciências Humanas e Sociais (p=0,003) e Saúde Pública (p<0,001), e maior dispersão e menor média ponderada relativa de localização do curso (p=0,004) para as disciplinas de Educação Alimentar e Nutricional. As Instituições de Ensino Superior portuguesas apresentaram maior carga horária absoluta e proporcional em Ciências Exatas (p<0.005; p=0,001 respectivamente) e maior proporcional em Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde (p<0.005). Conclusão Este estudo encontrou uma presença reduzida da área de Educação Alimentar e Nutricional na formação de nutricionistas em ambos os países.