This research was conducted to find out practical nutrition counselling systems by investigation of the status and perception for school nutrition counselling of 102 school dietitians who were working in Seoul and Kyeonggi-do in December, 2008. The su...
This research was conducted to find out practical nutrition counselling systems by investigation of the status and perception for school nutrition counselling of 102 school dietitians who were working in Seoul and Kyeonggi-do in December, 2008. The summarized results were as follows:
The major age range of dietitians in the research was from age 26 to 30 years-old by 38.2%. And the highest of job areas were Dongducheon-si and Yangju-si by 27.5%. In addition, 81.4% of dietitians was graduated university and the school dietitians career during of 3 to 6 years were 37.1%. About the necessity of nutrition counselling, 78.8% of the group perceived it necessary, and the main reason was because the effectiveness of healthcare is proved to be the best when the school foodservice program is linked together with nutrition counselling.
The rate of carrying out nutrition counselling was 26.2%, and the reason to conduct this was because of periodic inspections by the Office of Education. The major reason for not practicing counselling turned out the lack of working time by 64.0%. 74.1% of subjects answered that running a counselling room is the good method of counselling, and 50.0% of counselling dietitians selected interviewer come voluntarily. The main contents of the nutrition counselling were obesity and an unbalanced diet and mostly took place at a dietitians office for less than an hour a week. When dietitians need supplementary materials for counselling, they referred to the materials of Korean Dietetic Association. The most difficult problem of nutrition counselling was the lack of participants by 42.3%, and lack of time by 26.9%.
The practice rate of counselling for teachers was only 6.9% and for parents was 4.9% which was very low. The most effective age to start a nutrition counselling was answered the lower grade of elementary schools by 54.5%, and 22.8% of dietitians replied the most necessary thing to activate such counselling was the cooperation of the school. Dietitians evaluated the increase of fast food intakes, an unbalanced diet, and overeating as serious nutrition issues. As results of examining expected effects through nutrition counselling about each nutrition issues with 5 points, the improvement of eating habits and correction of unbalanced diet were 4.0 point.
Duties considered important by dietitians were in the order of menu management > hygiene control > purchasing management > nutrition education and counselling, on the other hand, the order of jobs actually taking much time was menu management> purchasing management > paper work > hygiene control, so there was a difference between tasks regarded important and taken much time.
From the results above, dietitians fully noticed the importance of nutrition counselling, however, the actual practice rate of counselling turned out very low. Therefore, dietitians should standardize and simplify the process of foodservice management to use more time on counselling and they should increase participants by promoting the necessity of counselling and the danger of nutrition issues. Furthermore, it need to develop and support standardized counselling manuals academically. Additionally, the Office of Education should enlarge and activate nutrition counselling by supporting professional counselling dietitians.