Knowledge and Counseling Attitude of Primary Health Care Physicians Regarding Nutrition in Baghdad

Abstract

AbstractBackground: Nutrition has a major role in health promotion and disease prevention. Nutritional knowledge of physicians had important impact in public health as they are in the front line of responding to patients’ questions concerning their diet; as well they might have the influence in decreasing morbidity and mortality through proper nutrition counseling.Aims: To assess the nutritional knowledge and attitude of physicians about nutrition counseling as well as to explore some determinants influencing the knowledge of physicians.Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted in 20 primary health care centers in Baghdad for the period from 10th of May, to the end of August, 2017. A self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. The questionnaire comprised questions to assess nutritional knowledge and attitude toward nutritional counseling. In addition, the collected data covered some sociodemographic characteristics of the physicians.Results: Out of 197 primary health care physicians working at the selected primary health care centers, 150 physicians enrolled in the study, with a response rate of 76.1%. The results showed that 67% of physicians had fair level of knowledge. Better level of knowledge was achieved by family medicine specialists, board qualified physicians, in addition to those with more than ten years post-graduation. Nearly all study participants (98%) had positive attitude toward nutritional counseling. Lack of time was the prime barrier to nutritional counseling as reported by 83 (55.3%) of physicians. Out of 150 physicians, 44% of them pointed out that web based material and social media were the dominant sources of their nutrition information.Conclusion: despite fair level of knowledge of physicians, the study identified considerable deficiencies in knowledge in some aspects of nutrition. Therefore, there is a need for better training and continuing medical education for primary health care physicians to enhance their knowledge and counseling in nutrition.