Evaluation of a medical school's integrated nutrition curriculum

This study presents an evaluation of an integrated nutrition curriculum to determine if students met a set of nutrition competencies and utilized nutrition oriented skills within a clinical setting. The evaluation measured changes in student outcomes between three graduating classes who were exposed to increasing portions of the nutrition curriculum, respectively. Results indicated that there was a significant increase from 1994 to 1996 in the percent of students who believed that the amount of nutrition they received was adequate compared with the AAMC Graduation survey. There was a significant increase in the nutrition post-test scores between classes and compared with pre-test scores for the class of 1997. The nutrition subscore for the Objective Structured Clinical Examination increased each year as students were exposed to greater amounts of the curriculum during their first 3 years of medical school. These results strongly suggest that students exposed "to the curriculum were able to categorize the topic area, learn the material, combine the knowledge and skills they obtained and use them within a clinical setting.