Principles of Nutritional Training and Counseling for Patients in Group Training Sessions Based on Behavioral Change Theory

The advance in educational sciences has demonstrated the effective role of behavioral theories in changing individuals' knowledge, attitude, and habits. Therefore, in order to have efficient and effective training about nutrition especially in group education sessions, applying curriculum development principles in determining educational content is inevitable The problems and obstacles in having effective nutrition education in units dealing with nutrition education especially in group sessions includes: lack of effective models and strategies for nutrition education, relying only on routine diets and providing different and unreliable information by different members of the treatment team for the patients. These problems motivated us to present this article in order to attain three general objectives. First, introducing general principles for education and group counseling in order to enhance the efficacy of nutrition education second, investigating factors affecting the quality of nutrition education through pointing to some important subjects and the third, providing a clear description for some behavioral attitudes and their related learning activities which are effective in nutrition education. This work explains that achieving educational objectives for making proper changes in patients' behavior is due to development and designing an appropriate educational model and guide. In such model, the structure of educational sessions, the procedure for nutrition education, the educational content, the educational strategies, and learning activities are based on curriculum development principles in which related behavioral elements have been considered.