Everything You Wish Your Doctor Knew About Nutrition

Fruits, vegetables, and other plant foods play a key role in preventing chronic diseases, but only 14 percent of physicians feel adequately trained to provide nutrition counseling, according to the Journal of American College of Nutrition. PCRM is helping by offering new, free online continuing education courses and distributing the Nutrition Guide for Clinicians to medical students.

PCRM’s freshly redesigned NutritionCME.org offers free continuing education for health care professionals. The site offers more than a dozen video and text courses in six topics:

• Bone Health: Calcium, Vitamin D, Dairy Product Intake, and Bone Health: The Evidence
• Cancer: Evaluating Plant-Based Nutrition for Cancer Prevention and Survival
• Cardiovascular Disease: Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease
• Diabetes: A Plant-Based Dietary Intervention for Type 2 Diabetes
• General Nutrition: The Power of Sustainable Changes in Diet and Lifestyle
• Obesity: A Two-Year Randomized Weight Loss Trial Comparing a Vegan Diet to a More Moderate Low-Fat Diet

Credits are available for physicians, nurses, and both registered dietitians and registered dietitian technicians.

To supplement nutritional training in medical school curricula, PCRM has also made its Nutrition Guide for Clinicians available to every second-year medical student in the United States and Canada free of charge.

This comprehensive, portable medical reference manual covers nearly 100 diseases and conditions, including risk factors, diagnoses, and typical treatments. Most importantly, it provides the latest evidence-based information on nutrition’s role in prevention and treatment. It also describes helpful ways to talk with patients about dietary changes.