Culinary Medicine in PA Education: Assessing Impact on Physician Assistant Students' Nutrition Knowledge and...

Culinary medicine incorporates nutrition science with hands-on cooking to educate PA students on the importance of diet and nutrition in patient care. A pilot study at Touro University California's Joint MSPAS/MPH Program studied the influence on overall attitudes, knowledge, and confidence in using nutrition as a clinical tool in patient management.

Forty-seven PA students participated in a 4-hour culinary medicine workshop partnered with a lecture discussing essential nutrition concepts such as carbohydrates, starches, fiber, sugars, and their participation in one's health. Prior to beginning the hands-on culinary medicine workshop, students completed a presurvey that used Likert-scale questions to assess food literacy, culinary skills, their personal nutrition choices, knowledge of various dietary regimens, ability to modify recipes for patient's specific dietary patterns, and their comprehensive understanding of diet-related chronic diseases. After completing the workshop, students completed a postsurvey featuring the same questions as the presurvey.

Using a paired t-test, the postworkshop survey showed a significant improvement (P < .01) in all categories including knowledge of nutritional quality, meal preparation and cooking skills, knowledge of and ability to discuss a variety of dietary regimens, recipe adaptation and customization for patients, knowledge of chronic diseases and impact of diet, and patient care and nutrition support.

The findings of this pilot study suggest that the integration of a hands-on culinary medicine workshop into PA curriculum can improve students' overall knowledge of nutrition and confidence in clinical applications. Future research studies should focus on measuring long-term knowledge retention and clinical impact.