A clinical nutrition course to improve pharmacy students' skills and confidence in counseling patients

Objective

To create, implement, and evaluate a PharmD course on primary care nutrition.

Design

A 2-credit hour elective course was offered to second- and third-year pharmacy students. It was informed by the Socratic method using a minimum number of formal lecture presentations and featured problem-based learning exercises, case-based scenarios, and scientific literature to fuel informed debate. A single group posttest design with a retrospective pretest was used to assess students'' self-efficacy.

Assessment

There was a significant overall improvement in students'' self-efficacy in their ability to practice primary care nutrition.

Conclusion

Completion of a nutrition course improved students'' confidence in providing primary care nutrition and empowered them to speak more comfortably about the role of nutrition in the prevention of chronic diseases.