Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice Concerning Nutritional Care Support among Iraqi Health Care Providers

Malnutrition can be recognized as one of the main issues in clinical practice. It can be overcome by suitable nutrition care provided by the available clinicians. Nevertheless, this practice is still missing perhaps because of the insufficient providers’ knowledge. The study goal was to assess the pharmacists and the doctors self-reported practices, attitudes, and knowledge to nutritional care support in Baghdad Medical City. A crosssectional study was done from February to March 2015 in Baghdad Medical City hospitals. The research tool (i.e., questionnaire) was distributed to 300 pharmacists and doctors employed in these hospitals using a drop-and-collect method. Of 102 respondents, 44 pharmacists and 58 doctors from different positions filled the questionnaire. Comparable proportion of pharmacists (29.1%) and doctors (31%) stated sufficient knowledge to do patient’s nutrition screening. In terms of knowledge score, doctors got higher mean score (5.37 ± 1.37) than what pharmacist had (4.70 ± 1.26, P=0.016), and more than three-quarter of them (80.4%) were congregated in the" average" score group. Furthermore, both doctor and pharmacists show unclear attitudes to nutritional care support. A considerable proportion of the respondents (42.2%) claimed that they made nutritional assessment throughout the patients’ hospitalization, and merely 38.2% of them reported that they do nutritional screening on admission. The lack of good or satisfactory level of nutritional care can be attributed to the absence of practical guidelines and inadequate knowledge among health care provider. Engaging both doctors and pharmacists in extensive educational and clinical training programs about nutritional care support could be worthy.