Nutrition in Physical Therapist Practice: Setting the Stage for Taking Action

Diet and nutrition are critical components of health, recovery from disease and illness, performance, and normal growth across the lifespan. Thus, it is important for physical therapists to be knowledgeable about nutrition and to have competency in providing information and guidance to patients/clients. Yet, there is an overwhelming amount of diet and nutrition information available from numerous sources, which makes it difficult to reach conclusions and determine the importance and relevance to patient care. The purpose of this perspective paper is to increase the knowledge and skills of physical therapists by providing guidelines for healthy eating and outlining diet and nutrition information most relevant for physical therapist practice and to clarify professional scope of practice related to diet and nutrition, including boundaries created by law, and the connection between healthy eating and health outcomes, muscle strength, bone health, and wound healing.