Hello. My name is Dr Stephen Devries and I'm a cardiologist and executive director of the nonprofit Gaples Institute for Integrative Cardiology. It's a pleasure to have an opportunity to share with you some interesting findings related to a new study I was involved in regarding nutrition education in cardiology.
Cardiologists and Nutrition: Survey Results
I'm sure you are aware that patients increasingly want to take more charge of their own health. In order to do so, they are asking their doctors more questions about nutrition. But how prepared are physicians to address those questions? Specifically, we asked: How prepared are cardiologists to deal with nutrition questions in their own practice?
In order to get at that question, my colleagues and I, members of the Nutrition Working Group of the American College of Cardiology, surveyed[1] over 900 practicing cardiologists, cardiologists-in-training, and cardiovascular health professionals and asked them a wide range of questions relating to their experience with nutrition education, their attitudes about nutrition and practice, and a little bit about their own personal nutrition habits.
What did we find? Among practicing cardiologists, fully 90% reported that they received either no or minimal nutrition education during their cardiology training. When we inquired a bit about their attitudes regarding nutrition and practice, 95% of cardiologists reported that they believed it was their personal responsibility to deliver at least basic nutrition education to their patients. We were a bit surprised. We had wondered whether cardiologists felt that it was someone else's job to do; but no, they felt that it was their own personal responsibility to at least deliver basic diet counseling to their patients.
We then asked cardiologists about their own personal health habits and inquired about their personal intake of vegetables and fruit. We found that only 20% of practicing cardiologists reported eating a total of five or more servings of vegetables and fruit per day. That is an important finding, not only because it speaks to opportunities to improve cardiologists' own health, but also because there are data[2] showing that physicians who adopt healthy lifestyle practices are more likely to counsel patients to do so as well.
Overcoming the Paradox
Where do we go from here? It's paradoxical that nutrition and lifestyle are identified in many of our clinical care guidelines as the foundations of good cardiovascular care, yet how can our cardiologists implement those guidelines without receiving adequate nutrition training? Obviously, we need to address that problem by providing meaningful nutrition education in all phases of medical training, beginning in medical school through internal medicine residency, and extending into cardiovascular training itself.
Currently there is no requirement that nutrition needs to be taught in cardiology training—and that needs to change. We also should include more nutrition content on board exams so that there will be additional motivation to teach nutrition to help pass the exam.
Please feel free to add your comments to this discussion. Thank you so much for watching. I'm Dr Stephen Devries.
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Any views expressed above are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of WebMD or Medscape.
Cite this: Cardiologists Are Hungry for Knowledge on Nutrition - Medscape - Aug 10, 2017.
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