Nutrition knowledge and Attitude in Medical Students of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in 2017-2018
Abstract Objectives: This study aimed at determining the nutritional knowledge and attitude of medical students through clinical training courses (externship and internship) of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran. A total of 220 medical students enrolled in this descriptive cross-sectional study through simple random sampling during 2017-2018. A nutritional knowledge questionnaire included 51 questions was used to determine the correct, perceived and accuracy of knowledge of the participant in different aspects of nutrition sciences. The questions of nutritional attitude were resulted from questionnaires of similar studies and valid books on nutrition. The attitude questionnaire included 29 questions. The nutrition knowledge and attitude questionnaire were confirmed in terms of the content and face validity and reliability. Results: The median knowledge score, median perceived knowledge and median accuracy knowledge score of the participants was 67.44%, 100% and 66.22% respectively. Results showed that most of the participants (49.61% of externs and 57.14% of inters) had a poor knowledge. The highest level of students' knowledge was in the field of general nutrition. The mean [SD] attitude index of the subjects was 107.12 [13.54] out of 145. Most students had a very appropriate attitude toward nutrition with a frequency of 204 (92.7%).