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Undervalued professionals: placement of nutritionist in the Ecuadorian health system

BACKGROUND: Currently, many public health issues are directly related to malnutrition, and are made worse by social inequities. Nutrition professionals must be a key player in improving epidemiological aspects of nutrition-related diseases and must be part of clinical teams to control nutritional co...

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Autores principales: Román, A. C., Villar, M. A., Belmont-Guerron, P., Ocampo, M. B.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10134652/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37101179
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-023-09340-8
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author Román, A. C.
Villar, M. A.
Belmont-Guerron, P.
Ocampo, M. B.
author_facet Román, A. C.
Villar, M. A.
Belmont-Guerron, P.
Ocampo, M. B.
author_sort Román, A. C.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Currently, many public health issues are directly related to malnutrition, and are made worse by social inequities. Nutrition professionals must be a key player in improving epidemiological aspects of nutrition-related diseases and must be part of clinical teams to control nutritional concerns. OBJECTIVE: To identify and analyze the nutritionists´ employment situation in Ecuador and areas of work covered and determine if type of university has an impact over work situation. METHODOLOGY: A cross-sectional study was conducted, approved by the ethics committee of Universidad San Francisco de Quito. It included 442 nutritionists in Ecuador who graduated in 13 universities (5 private (PR) and 8 public (PU)) between 2008 and 2019. It implied an online survey that questioned their satisfaction with their education and current work situation. All the statistical analyses were performed using R version 4.0.3, two-sided weighted chi-square test was performed to estimate the difference between public and private university graduates, IC 95%, p between 0.01 and 0.05. RESULTS: 38,6% of participants are unemployed, 68,28% private university graduates (PR) are currently employed and 58.87% work as nutritionists, compared to 56,86% from a public university (PU) currently working and 44.69% working in the field. 76% have reported being unemployed at some point in their careers, being difficulty finding jobs the main reason. Regarding the professional field, most professionals have their own business, and the less common area of work was public and community nutrition. One third of the participants had another paid activity. The main salary is 800USD per month and graduated from PR perceived better salaries than from PU. CONCLUSION: There is a lack of job opportunities for Ecuadorian nutritionists despite the high demand in every level of the health system. Most have been unemployed at some point in their careers due to difficulties finding jobs. There is a minimum nutrition staff working in community and public health nutrition.
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spelling pubmed-101346522023-04-28 Undervalued professionals: placement of nutritionist in the Ecuadorian health system Román, A. C. Villar, M. A. Belmont-Guerron, P. Ocampo, M. B. BMC Health Serv Res Research BACKGROUND: Currently, many public health issues are directly related to malnutrition, and are made worse by social inequities. Nutrition professionals must be a key player in improving epidemiological aspects of nutrition-related diseases and must be part of clinical teams to control nutritional concerns. OBJECTIVE: To identify and analyze the nutritionists´ employment situation in Ecuador and areas of work covered and determine if type of university has an impact over work situation. METHODOLOGY: A cross-sectional study was conducted, approved by the ethics committee of Universidad San Francisco de Quito. It included 442 nutritionists in Ecuador who graduated in 13 universities (5 private (PR) and 8 public (PU)) between 2008 and 2019. It implied an online survey that questioned their satisfaction with their education and current work situation. All the statistical analyses were performed using R version 4.0.3, two-sided weighted chi-square test was performed to estimate the difference between public and private university graduates, IC 95%, p between 0.01 and 0.05. RESULTS: 38,6% of participants are unemployed, 68,28% private university graduates (PR) are currently employed and 58.87% work as nutritionists, compared to 56,86% from a public university (PU) currently working and 44.69% working in the field. 76% have reported being unemployed at some point in their careers, being difficulty finding jobs the main reason. Regarding the professional field, most professionals have their own business, and the less common area of work was public and community nutrition. One third of the participants had another paid activity. The main salary is 800USD per month and graduated from PR perceived better salaries than from PU. CONCLUSION: There is a lack of job opportunities for Ecuadorian nutritionists despite the high demand in every level of the health system. Most have been unemployed at some point in their careers due to difficulties finding jobs. There is a minimum nutrition staff working in community and public health nutrition. BioMed Central 2023-04-26 /pmc/articles/PMC10134652/ /pubmed/37101179 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-023-09340-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Román, A. C.
Villar, M. A.
Belmont-Guerron, P.
Ocampo, M. B.
Undervalued professionals: placement of nutritionist in the Ecuadorian health system
title Undervalued professionals: placement of nutritionist in the Ecuadorian health system
title_full Undervalued professionals: placement of nutritionist in the Ecuadorian health system
title_fullStr Undervalued professionals: placement of nutritionist in the Ecuadorian health system
title_full_unstemmed Undervalued professionals: placement of nutritionist in the Ecuadorian health system
title_short Undervalued professionals: placement of nutritionist in the Ecuadorian health system
title_sort undervalued professionals: placement of nutritionist in the ecuadorian health system
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10134652/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37101179
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-023-09340-8
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