Doctors Know Less Than They Think About Nutrition

In failing in a test of basic knowledge on diet and coronary heart disease, doctors are failing their patients. “The current study clearly shows that there is an undeniable misalignment of health professionals’ actual and perceived lifestyle modification knowledge. Simply put, doctors say they are knowledgeable but the majority of them are not. The range of knowledge demonstrated in the study indicates that misinformation and misconceptions regarding lifestyle modification are rife among health professionals. These results are particularly disturbing since the study tested health professionals’ applied knowledge of lifestyle modification, directly providing an indication of the information that they dispense to their [chronic diseases of lifestyle] patients.”

“These perceptions lead to misplaced complacency among health professionals and explain why they do not view lack of knowledge as a barrier to counselling. Even more disturbing is the fact that they are confident in providing lifestyle modification counselling to patients, which begs the question: are patients really benefiting from the current counselling sessions?”

When the doctors were asked why they don’t counsel their patients more often on diet, exercise, and smoking cessation, they denied their main problem was lack of knowledge, nor inadequate counseling skills on their part, no. Lack of time was certainly identified as a problem, but reason number one, they blame the patients.

To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Peter Mellor.

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• Parker WA, Steyn NP, Levitt NS, Lombard CJ. 2011. They think they know but do they? Misalignment of perceptions of lifestyle modification knowledge among health professionals. Public Health Nutr. 2011 Aug;14(8):1429-38.

Images thanks to aeu04117 via Flickr

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