Entry-Level Physical Therapy Students' Knowledge and Attitudes of Nutrition

<p>Like other allied health fields, physical therapy has incorporated health promotion as a part of their practice. A large and important component of health promotion is nutrition. Little research has been conducted on the knowledge and attitudes of nutrition in physical therapists and has only included small sample sizes. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to expand upon the knowledge and attitudes of nutrition in physical therapy students.<strong> </strong>Subjects included doctoral physical therapy students from across the United States, ranging from first year to senior level. The present research was conducted online via a Qualtrics survey. Surveys, included a nutrition knowledge test (NKT) (32 possible points) and an attitudes scale (55 possible points) and were disseminated by doctoral physical therapy program directors to students in various programs. The mean attitude score of this sample (N=605) was 47.13 ± 4.32. The mean NKT score was 22.43 ± 3.43. There was no correlation between nutrition attitudes and nutrition knowledge (.026, p=.526. There were differences in NKT scores between those who had taken previous nutrition courses and those who had not. From these results, we can conclude that increasing the number of nutrition courses taken by physical therapy students may lead to greater knowledge of nutrition.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science - Kinesiology

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Kinesiology and Health Science

Year dc:date.available

2018

Author dc:creator

• Day, Jordan D

Contributors dc:contributor

• Eric Jones, Ph.D.
• Dustin Joubert, Ph.D.
• Todd Whitehead, Ph.D.

• Physical Therapy
• Physical Therapy Students
• Nutrition Education
• Nutrition Attitudes
• Dietetics and Clinical Nutrition
• Medical Education
• Other Nutrition

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/etds/185

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.sfasu.edu:etds-1166