Physicians' and medical students' knowledge of nutrition

A study was conducted to assess the knowledge of nutrition of 184 family practitioners and general internists and 24 first- and second-year medical students before they had received medical school instruction in clinical nutrition. Overall, the physicians answered 69.2% of the questions correctly, a significantly better score than that of the medical students (62.5%, p = .0065). The physicians scored better on topics that have been the most heavily researched (such as diet and coronary heart disease) and worse on less heavily investigated topics (such as diet and cancer, iron absorption). There was no significant difference in overall knowledge in terms of gender or practice. However, a significant negative correlation was found between the number of years since graduation from medical school and respondents' knowledge about nutrition.