General Physicians’ Educational Needs about Diet Therapy, a Job Analysis Study

Introduction: Although it is obvious that nutrition has a clear impact on incidence, prevention, and treatment of many diseases, it has not been addressed properly in medical education. Therefore, physicians’ educational needs assessment is the first step of improving physicians’ skills in nutrition and diet therapy. Methods: It is a cross-sectional study. In this study, a focus group was hold. Then essential topics for training physicians was developed using the job analysis approach (Including determining the tasks sub tasks skills and items that can be corrected through training). Result: Five main tasks that must be learned were achieved. They were nutritional status assessment, patient’s data analysis, determining the diet suitable for patient’s condition, planning the diet therapy, its implementation, and evaluation. 19 sub tasks were defined for these main duties. Conclusion: There was a well consistency between our findings and earlier studies around the world. These results can be used to raise the nutritional knowledge of general practitioners whether through academic courses included in their curricula, or continuing education programs.