Background: Although doctors, students and teachers all coincide in acknowledging the need for an appropriate knowledge of human nutrition in order to practice medicine, the inclusion of this discipline in the undergraduate curriculum has been rather scant. Until a few years ago, there were only two medical schools in Spain with a compulsory course in nutrition as part of the syllabus.
Goal: An attempt will be made to assess the current status of the teaching of nutrition within the syllabuses for a degree in Medicine and Surgery at Spanish universities.
Materials: The syllabuses of 27 Faculties of Medicine in Spain have been consulted to find out: 1) if there are specific subjects on nutrition, feeding and/or dietetics, 2) if these subjects are compulsory or optional, and 3) if there are specific issues from this area included within other subjects.
Results: The results of the query show that 7 schools (approximately 25% of the total) teach a compulsory subject on nutrition or dietetics whereas 17 have at least one optional subject in this field, particularly during the second or specialization stage, with a mean content worth 4.5 credits. Furthermore, 3 of the schools offer both compulsory and optional courses simultaneously. Within the course material of the core subjects included in the second stage of the degree, the subjects of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Paediatrics seem to be the ones most commonly including clinical nutrition topics, generally with a very small relative weight.
Conclusions: The results obtained show an increasing interest in the creation of distinctive subjects for nutrition and/or dietetics. Nonetheless, this is still mainly an optional subject and the integration of human nutrition into the syllabus for core subjects seems insufficient for its to be considered a good alternative.