Prevailing practices, attitudes & awareness regarding micronutrients among health professionals in Telangana

Abstract

Introduction: Micronutrients play a very important role in both promoting health and curing disease by health professionals. They play a central part in metabolism and in the maintenance of tissue function. It is important that doctors and other health professionals are aware of the evidence for the nutritional essentiality of these substances, and for the situations where an increased intake may lead to clinical benefit. Objectives: 1. To assess the knowledge of health professionals micronutrients and practices in prescribing in treatment. 2. To determine the measures followed by the health professionals in including micronutrients in their own diet. Materials and Methods: A pre-designed and pre-tested anonymous self administered questionnaire was used in a cross sectional study. Results: 70% of doctors said that they had enough knowledge about prescribing and counseling to patients regarding micronutrients. On comparing the knowledge of specialists about micronutrients with the general practitioners we didn’t find any significant increase in knowledge with specialization. A large section of doctors 95% of agreed that nutrition plays an important role in treatment and prescription and counseling of micronutrients is needed. But 82% of doctors are not sure and 8% even strongly disagreed if their patients will follow a diet plan even if given. Most of the study participants felt they were not up-to-date about micronutrients. Majority of them attributed this to lack of time and being unaware of any structured resource. Conclusion There is a need to restructure about imparting micronutrients education among doctors. Greater efforts should be aimed towards imparting updates about micronutrients in doctors and other health professionals enable them to contribute positively towards a healthy society. More Studies should be carried out in healthcare professionals