Investigation On Supply And Demand Of Medical Nutrition Students From Higher Vocational School

【Objective】To reflect the goal of pertinence, practicality and advancement in the education of medical nutrition studies from higher vocational school, and meet the demand of employer, we investigated the hospital nutrition clinic, catering companies, community health service stations, kindergarten and higher vocational school.【Methods】The directors in hospital nutrition clinic, catering companies, communities and kindergarten were interviewed using the methods of questionnaires, individual or telephone interviews, seminars and other methods. A total of nine questionnaires were designed to investigate the professional trends, talent demand conditions, job knowledge, abilities of employees required, the appropriate professional qualifications, student employments. We collected 112 questionnaires from employers and 80 from graduated students.【Results】Interview results showed the employers considered that higher vocational students should be have a reasonable orientation. In general, hospitals do not recruit the medical nutrition students from higher vocational school because of the overall academic level of hospital. In consideration of the cost, most community health service stations and catering enterprises have no positions for these graduated students. In kindergartens, the job of medicine nutrition usually is conducted by health teachers.The medical nutrition students from our school were employed by 24 hospitals. 4 hospitals (16.7%) considered their work as very good and 16 (66.7%) as good. On the other hand, 4 hospitals (16.7%) considered that their work is average in performance. The most important aspects required by hospital is the student's professional knowledge (100%) and overall qualities (96%). We investigated 20 companies unrelated to medicine. 12 companies (60%) set the position of dietitian. They are focus on nutrition recipe and cost accounting, following by cooking skill, nutrition education and warehouse management. Excellent communication and language expression ability (100%) were asked by all companies. However, they did not raise any demand for computer skill (0%).There are 112 medicine nutrition students (106 females and 6 males) graduated from our school for recent 3 years. 52.7% of them are working in hospitals and health-related companies. Students consider that they should change the idea of employment (98.2%) and increased practical ability (92.8%). Many students want to learn more knowledge in school, and hope to have two and half years for study in school and six months for practice.【Conclusion】Our findings suggest that the current system for the education of medicine nutrition students can not meet the market demand, and many courses can no longer meet the needs of student work. Thus, further reform that the increase of new curriculum is required. The relationship between the teachers of basic courses and specialized course is also should be considered. In addition, to improve the professional skills of the students and increase their employment rate, we recommend the "cooperative education" with other institutions.