EVALUATING THE USE OF A MULTIMEDIA APPROACH TO TEACHING NUTRITION IN MEDICAL-SCHOOL

Barriers to medical students receiving nutrition education exist and u se of multimedia programs has been suggested as one solution. However, evaluation strategies to determine the effectiveness of this approach are lacking. The experience of 140 medical students using a nutrition multimedia program and the strategies used to assess student attitude s toward this independent learning strategy are reported. Their perfor mance in counseling standardized patients after studying the program w as evaluated. The use of multimedia technology to provide appropriate physician role models teaching nutrition assessment and counseling has promise.