Child development and nutrition. What do university students know?

Abstract

Introduction: University students who will serve in the care of the mother-child binomial should recognize the importance of knowledge about Child Development, Nutrition and Food in early care.

Objective: To analyze what university students know about child development, nutrition and feeding.

Material and Methods: Exploratory study by a semi structured survey in a population of 134 undergraduate students of: Nursing, Nutrition, Medicine, Psychology and Pedagogy of the Veracruz University. The data were processed in the program Minitab 15 applying tests of Kruskal Wallis.

Results: Students showed difficulty in expressing their knowledge and their level was not homogeneous in the groups. Child development scores were higher in Nursing and Medicine students, however in all students, knowledge about the Development milestones and Nutrition was lower than recommended with a median of 5 of 10 and 3 of 18 successes respectively.

Discussion and conclusions: The study reported insufficient knowledge and it should be encouraged that undergraduate students take ownership of knowledge, favoring that they evaluate aspects of child development and nutrition in a daily way considering the interaction with parents, so that experience affinity for the subject, deepen the concepts and thus improve their professional performance allowing them to identify children who have developmental disorders or are at risk of suffering them. It is suggested the creation of a multidisciplinary unit of Nutrition and Child Development as an inter and transdisciplinary space where educational strategies are offered to future professionals involved in early care.