Education of nurses in nutrition support Satiapoorany K. Subramaniam University Kebangsaan, Malaysia Nutrition is something we all share. We all eat. Eating the right diet is fundamental to good health. Our own struggles to improve our individual diets can serve as a knowledge base for counseling our patients. Nutrition can serve as a foundation for preventive medicine discussions. In addition, medicine continues to accumulate evidence demonstrating the correlation between diet and long term health and disease prevention. Therefore providing dietary advice is arguably more difficult. People will only make dietary changes if they are motivated and understand why they are being asked to make such changes; they will only make changes compatible with their lifestyle and with a realistic prospect of achieving a result. Nurses and dieticians cannot be substitutes for each other; the should use their complementary skills and relationships with patients to promote healthy eating and dietary change. Nurses and dieticians cannot be substitutes for each other; they should use their complementary skills and relationships with patients to promote healthy eating and dietary change. Nurses can identify nutritional problems early in the treatment episode. Their skills lie in assessing the individual's nutritional, health and social circumstances, identifying and dealing with straightforward nutritional problems and referring onwards to the dietician. Nurses may also reinforce advice given by the dietician. Proper nutrition can reduce medical complications, speed healing, and improve outcomes in sick people. Patients are increasingly both curious and knowledgeable about nutritional issues. Inadequately trained nurses are unprepared to guide their patients through the minefield of quackery that today's health marketplace has become. Nurses need a good basic understanding of the science of nutrition so that they can keep up with the burgeoning literature to which they (and their patients) are exposed. *Contact person email : satia@mail.hukm.ukm.my From "The 11th PENSA Congress" October 1-4, 2005, Sheraton Grande Walkerhill Hotel, Seoul, Korea. Page: 290