Perceptions of importance of management aspects of dietetic practice

On an average, undergraduate dietetic majors tended to perceive management-related tasks much the same as did dietetic practitioners, i.e., that such tasks were less important in dietetic practice. Not all dietetic practitioners had the same perceptions, i.e., administrative practitioners rated management-related tasks as much more important than did clinical nutrition practitioners. The sample of educators, on the other hand, perceived the management-related tasks as almost equal in importance to the clinical-nutrition-related tasks. No one rated the management tasks as unimportant, which is encouraging. There appears to be a strong base on which to build. The concern is that undergraduate majors and clinical practitioners, in particular, do not perceive the area of management as equally important to the profession. This failure is of particular concern if the growth of the profession is to be in management areas. These findings are supportive of an anecdotal point of view which has long pervaded the conversations of many dietitians; namely, that clinical nutrition practice is synonymous with dietetic practice. In a sense, it is not unusual that undergraduates also seem to feel this way--they obviously have many role models who do. If the dietetic profession is to increase the number of its members in management positions, attitudes about the importance of management and the acquiring of management skills must change. One can speculate on the possibility of role model learning of the CUP students in this sample.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)