Preventive Medicine Good for Training Docs and Patients

Newswise — Medical students who take a class in preventive medicine during their second year say they feel more comfortable counseling their patients about the importance of diet and exercise — and they start watching their own diets as well, according to a new report.

The budding doctors at Harvard Medical School were significantly more likely to say they could effectively counsel their patients about preventive medicine after taking the 28-hour course, compared with students who did not receive similar training.

"Medical students have reported being ill-prepared to counsel patients about diet and exercise and pessimistic about their ability to learn these skills," say Molly Conroy, M.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital and colleagues. Their findings are published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The new study, which is the first to measure the effect of preventive health training on students' confidence in their doctoring skills and their own health, "suggests that a medical school course in preventive medicine and nutrition may increase future physicians' rates of counseling about preventive behaviors," Conroy says.

"Whether these changes will endure the rigors of the clinical clerkships and persist beyond graduation also needs to be determined," she adds.

The researchers surveyed 134 second-year medical students before and after the preventive medicine course, which included topics like immunizations, counseling, clinical nutrition and exercise.

At the end of the study, 87 percent of the students said that the course "had made them more aware of their dietary choices" and 72 percent said that their diet had improved as a result. Many of the students reported eating less trans-fats and saturated fats and loading up their plates with more fish and vegetables. Only 18 percent said the course had changed their exercise habits.

Students who didn't take the class were less likely to report improvements in counseling patients about preventive medicine, and their diet habits remained the same throughout the study, according to Conroy and colleagues.