Individualized diet conversation in primary care: A pilot intervention

Most primary care providers do not routinely discuss nutrition and diet with their patients, largely due to lack of time, inadequate resources, and perceived complexity of the topic. This article describes development and implementation of a brief protocol for systematically assessing and discussing diet during routine primary care visits to increase the frequency of these conversations and improve patient health outcomes.

The authors developed a protocol for assessing both nutrition and stage of change as well as a guide for engaging in patient-led conversations about nutrition. The protocol was modeled after Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment and informed by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change, and principles of motivational interviewing. It was implemented over three months at a rural health clinic staffed by one NP.

The protocol and conversation guide were easy to use with minimal training and seamlessly incorporated into clinic workflow. The likelihood of making diet changes increased significantly following the diet conversation, with persons who initially scored lower in readiness to change ultimately reporting significantly greater increases.

A protocol for assessing diet and engaging patients in a stage of change-appropriate diet conversation can be efficiently integrated into a single primary care visit and increase patients' intent to change their diet. Further investigation is needed to evaluate the protocol more completely and in multiple clinics.