Dietary advice in clinical practice: the views of general practitioners in Europe

General practitioners (GPs) can promote good nutrition to patients and advise them about desirable dietary practices for specific conditions.

The objective was to assess GPs' knowledge and attitudes in implementing preventive and health promotion activities and to describe tools used by European GPs in advising patients about dietary practices.

A postal survey was mailed to 1976 GPs from 10 GP national colleges to obtain information about beliefs and attitudes in prevention and health promotion, and an e-mail survey was sent to 15 GPs representing national colleges to obtain information about dietary guidelines.

In the postal survey, 45% of GPs reported estimating body mass in clinical practice, and 60% reported advising overweight patients to lose weight. Fifty-eight percent answered that they felt minimally effective or ineffective in helping patients achieve or maintain normal weight. In the e-mail survey, only 4 colleges out of 15 reported that they had published their own dietary tools, although 10 out of 15 answered that GPs use some nutritional/dietary recommendations in the office when seeing patients. Eleven out of 15 answered that both the nurse and the GP advise patients about dietary practices, with 4 answering that GPs were the only ones who advise patients. Only 5 delegates answered that they can refer their patients to trained nutrition specialists.

GPs think that obesity is not easy to handle in practice. Most GPs have dietary tools in the office and think that nurses play an important role in advising patients.