Consensus development on the essential competencies for Iranian public health nutritionists

Abstract

Objective: To assess key experts' opinion regarding essential competencies required for effective public health nutrition practice within the health-care system of Iran. Design: Qualitative study using the modified Delphi technique through an emaildelivered questionnaire. Setting: Iran. Subjects: Fifty-five experts were contacted through email. The inclusion criterion for the study panel was being in a relevant senior-level position in nutrition science or public health nutrition in Iran. Results: In the first round, forty-two out of fifty-five experts responded to the questionnaire (response rate = 76 %). A sixty-five-item questionnaire was designed with nine competency areas, including 'nutrition science', 'planning and implementing nutritional interventions', 'health and nutrition services', 'advocacy and communication', 'assessment and analysis', 'evaluation', 'cultural, social and political aspects', 'using technology' and 'leadership and management'. All experts who had participated in the first round completed a modified version of the questionnaire with seventy-seven items in the second round. The experts scored 'nutrition science' as the most essential competency area, while more applied areas such as 'management and leadership' were less emphasized. In both rounds, the mean difference between the opinions of the necessity of each area was 5·6 %. Conclusions: The Iranian experts had general agreement on most of the core competency areas of public health nutritionists. The results indicated the need for capacity building and revisions to educational curricula for public health nutritionist programmes, with more emphasis on skill-based competency development.

Ensino Superior: A Psicologia Na Formação Do Nutricionista

“…Todas estas competências estão no arcabouço da Psicologia e vão ao encontro de necessidades destacadas pelos participantes da presente investigação. O mesmo estudo compara estes resultados com dados de outros países como Austrália, Canadá, Estados Unidos e dados europeus, mostrando resultados semelhantes quanto a tais competências 29 .…”

Educational training of nutritionists in Public Health Nutrition: A systematic review

“…A study carried out by Sadeghi-Ghotbabadi et al [46] compared the essential competencies for "PHN practice". The authors found that the ability to "asses and analyze" was the only common competency needed among some countries, such as Iran, Australia, Canada, the United States, and some European countries [46].…”

“…Therefore, in terms of Public Health, in order to meet the demands of contemporary health care practice, the educational training of nutritionists must consider the practice aspects and the challenges of professional performance, taking into account the transformations in the labor market, the social determinants of health, the epidemiological and nutritional transition, the complexity of Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases (CNCD), and Food and Nutrition Security (FNS) dimensions [6][7][8][9].…”

“…In this perspective, due to the growth and aging of population, the need for new health service arrangements, and the search for healthier living conditions, there has been a significant increase in the number of Nutrition courses in Higher Education Institutions, and consequently in the number of professionals, in several countries [9,[11][12][13][14].…”

“…Therefore, some studies have proposed a consensus on the skills and competencies necessary for a good professional performance of nutritionists in Public Health that can contribute to a more adequate and thorough training for professional practice [6,9,15]. Thus, it is important to evaluate the "educational training of nutritionists in public health" [16,17].…”