Culinary Medicine – A new teaching approach to improve medical students’ counselling skills for nutrition-associated diseases. Review and exploratory pilot study at Göttingen medical school
by Laura Antonia Drösch
Date of Examination:2025-03-27
Date of issue:2025-02-20
Advisor:PD Dr. Thomas Ellrott
Referee:PD Dr. Thomas Ellrott
Referee:Prof. Dr. Dirk Raddatz
Persistent Address:
http://dx.doi.org/10.53846/goediss-11083
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Abstract
English
Global health is increasingly impaired by the burden of Non-Communicable Diseases. NCDs like cardiovascular and metabolic diseases or cancer are often associated to peoples’ nutrition. Either the disease’s pathology is based on an unhealthy diet and/or the therapy contains nutrition related changes besides other behavior adjustments. To counter this burden of diseases, health workers and especially physicians should be more attentive to intervene and counsel patients for a healthy diet. Physicians are predestined to act as role model for their patients and to initiate the nutrition therapy process. To sensitize doctors as early as possible, the new teaching approach Culinary Medicine was implemented in many of the US medical Schools over the last years. This evidence-based field combines nutrition science and nutrition therapy with hands-on cooking classes, where theoretical knowledge can be practical implemented. Several studies from different medical schools with different curricula showed that Culinary Medicine classes seem feasible for improving medical students’ counselling skills in nutrition topics, their personal cooking and dietary behavior and their attitudes towards nutrition in medicine. Due to the huge success of various CM curricula in the US, the German medical school of the Universitätsmedizin Göttingen decided to implement their own CM curriculum on the theoretical basis of the LEKuP, a German guideline for nutrition therapy in in-and outpatient care. First running of the elective course was conducted in the winter semester 2020/2021. To identify the impact of participation in the CM elective, a pre- and post-survey was filled out by the students. Evaluation included personal cooking and dietary behavior, attitudes towards nutrition in medicine, counselling competencies, theoretical knowledge about the LEKuP and the WHO-5 Well-Being Index. First evaluation results showed significant improvement of medical students’ counselling competencies and knowledge about the LEKuP. Further course implementation with more participants and in more medical institutions is needed to confirm those prior findings in German medical schools. A multisite evaluation in cooperation with the medical schools of Gießen and Brandenburg is already in progress. The long-term objective of this new teaching concept is to improve medical students’ competences in consulting behavior and nutrition topics and therefore, sharpen the view for the need of interventions concerning nutrition related diseases. In this way, aspiring physicians can transfer their theoretical nutrition knowledge into lifestyle interventions that are relevant to patients’ everyday life. In addition, the initiation of a multidisciplinary therapy process for personal nutrition counselling including other health care professionals like dieticians or nutrition specialist will take place more often. As a consequence, interprofessional cooperation and collaboration is intensified for the benefit of positive disease outcome. This contributes to the optimization of holistic patient care and conquers the burden of nutrition-associated diseases.
Keywords: Culinary Medicine; Nutrition in medical education
