Need assessment for nutrition counseling: Viewpoints from gout patients, physicians nurses, and dietitians

This study describes quantitative results from one of the three methods in need assessments for nutrition counseling in a research series between 1999 and 2000. Three structured, semi open-ended, self-administered questionnaires designed for dietitians (11 hospitals), gout patients (two clinics), and medical staff including physicians and nurses in internal medicine departments (four hospitals) were designed to collect opinions regarding nutrition counseling. Total 54 dietitians from nine hospitals, 124 gout patients from two physicians' clinics and 127 medical staff from three hospitals completed the questionnaires. Fifteen percent of the gout patients had experiences on nutrition counseling. The order of credibility for gout-related education information was from medical staff, dietitians, newspapers magazines, television radio, friends relatives, then traditional medicine staff and direct sales (with 60% participants considering direct sales to be an unreliable source). Almost half (48.6%) of patients had the opinion that the duration of nutrition counseling should be 15 to 30 min. Nearly half of the patients did not consider the fee charged to be the limiting factor for the motivation for nutrition counseling. Nevertheless, 38% of the participating patients thought that the charge would be an influential factor and the acceptable range was NT $ 50 to 200. Eight percent of the medical staff did not aware that the nutrition counseling service existed in the hospital, with 98% of them regarding this as a very important service to patients. The participating dietitians thought that communication skills, contents, human skills, and patient motivation were important contributing factors for the success of nutrition counseling. Moreover, most dietitians and medical staff did not have preferences for the charging systems. They suggested that the fee could be NT $ 100 to 300 per section. Most dietitians disagreed with providing free services; however, 85% of them agreed with the co-payment system.