How can nutrition education contribute to competency-based resident evaluation?

The Curriculum Committee of the Nutrition Academic Award (NAA) has created a consensus document of knowledge, skills, and attitude learning objectives for medical nutrition education. To evaluate the impact of nutrition education in residency training, it is necessary to specify the goals and objectives of that education in terms of specific learner outcomes. To make the NAA objectives more user friendly for graduate medical education faculty, they must be translated into measurable competencies. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has proposed a schema for organizing resident competencies. This article illustrates one way that the NAA curriculum objectives can be translated into specific competencies to demonstrate medical knowledge, patient care, practice-based learning, interpersonal and communication skills, professionalism, and systems-based practice.