Eating Habits and Nutrition Discussion Response

Questions to answer on the below write-up

Provide constructive feedback or pose questions to your colleagues about the effectiveness of their selected educational media with their patient population.

Explain whether your colleagues’ media pieces would be effective with patients at your current Practicum setting. If so, explain why. If not, explain how you would revise the media to reach your patient population.

Eating Habits and Nutrition

I have chosen nutrition and eating habits during pregnancy as my health promotion topic. I have an interest in this topic because I think there are common misconceptions surrounding this topic. I have friends who believed that the infamous phrase, “eating for two”, truly meant they needed to eat twice as much which is far from the truth.

I have a dear friend who gained 85 pounds during pregnancy and is still trying to recover from these health effects years later. Healthy nutrition in pregnancy sets the scene for positive long-term health and has important implications for fetal development and growth (Ashman, Brown, Collins, Rollo, & Rae, 2017).

The maternal diet must provide adequate energy and nutrients to meet the nutritional needs of the mother as well as her fetus (Ashman et al., 2017). Additionally, weight gain during pregnancy is very important and needs to be monitored closely, which is why we are always weighing patients and comparing weights each prenatal visit.

If excessive gestational weight is gained, the risk of maternal postpartum obesity rises and if gestational weight gain is low, there is an increased risk of having a low-birth weight infant (Ashman et al., 2017).

Inadequate diets can lead to nutrient deficiencies such as folate deficiency which is linked to spina bifida and cleft lip/palate, iodine deficiency which is linked to impaired brain development, and iron deficiency which is linked to low birth weight (Lee, Newton, Radcliffe, & Belski, 2018).

It is important to assess and gain insight into the influencing factors of women’s dietary behaviors in order to help change them (Bookari, Yeatman, & Williamson, 2017).

Multiple factors are often involved and include pre-pregnancy BMI, presence of nausea and vomiting, knowledge and attitudes, income, marital status, and community factors (Bookari et al., 2017).

Lack of relevant nutrition knowledge can be a barrier to a healthy diet as well as appropriate use of nutritional supplements such as folic acid and iron (Bookari et al., 2017). Research has indicated that most women have high levels of motivation and confidence in their ability to achieve a healthy diet and understand dietary recommendations (Bookari et al., 2017).

Knowing their level of motivation will help guide further education opportunities. While it can be assumed that it is positive fact women are highly motivated and confident, this can also lead health care providers into incorrectly assuming women are already knowledgeable and an opportunity for education might be missed (Bookari et al., 2017).

The bottom line is assessing each woman should be done on an individual basis as each woman will have a different level of knowledge and benefit from varying levels of education.

Educational Media Piece

The patient population of pregnant women that I have cared for during my practicum includes women ages 19 all the way to 39 years old. Most are educated women with supportive partners.

One thing that every single woman has in common is that they carry their phones. Often, they are on their phones when I walk into the room as they wait during their appointment. While I know I could create a pamphlet or another flyer to hand out, often these get misplaced or thrown away.

I think an effective educational app that can be downloaded onto the patient’s phone and used daily would be a highly effective educational media piece. The adoption of smartphones provides an opportunity to improve health through apps that are readily available and can be referenced as often as needed (Kennelly et al., 2016).

While researching this topic, I searched nutrition during pregnancy under the app store on my phone and found a wonderful app that includes each food group, examples of healthy options from each, and their nutritional information.

If I were creating an app for this patient population, I would also include extensive information about each vitamin and mineral that is important during pregnancy and include tips on taking them. Another effective part of the creation of this app will be a record-keeping section as I find it very useful to track dietary habits when attempting to make improvements.

References

Ashman, A. M., Brown, L. J., Collins, C. E., Rollo, M. E., & Rae, K. M. (2017). Factors associated with effective nutrition interventions for pregnant indigenous women: A systematic review. Journal of The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 117(8), 1222–1253.e2. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1016/j.jand.2017.03.012

Bookari, K., Yeatman, H., & Williamson, M. (2017). Informing nutrition care in the antenatal period: Pregnant women’s experiences and need for support. BioMed Research International, 2017, 1–16. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1155/2017/4856527

Kennelly, M. A., Ainscough, K., Lindsay, K., Gibney, E., Mc Carthy, M., & McAuliffe, F. M. (2016). Pregnancy, exercise and nutrition research study with smart phone app support (Pears): Study protocol of a randomized controlled trial. Contemporary Clinical Trials, 46, 92–99. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1016/j.cct.2015.11.018

Lee, A., Newton, M., Radcliffe, J., & Belski, R. (2018). Pregnancy nutrition knowledge and experiences of pregnant women and antenatal care clinicians: A mixed methods approach. Women & Birth, 31(4), 269–277. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1016/j.wombi.2017.10.010

Morrison, J. L., & Regnault, T. R. H. (2016). Nutrition in pregnancy: Optimizing maternal diet and fetal adaptations to altered nutrient supply. Nutrients, 8(6), 342. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.3390/nu8060342

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