International Journal of Emergency Mental Health and Human Resilience
Open Access

Abstract

At our undergraduate nursing institution, faculty are encouraged to develop interprofessional curricula. As psychology and nutrition faculty, we designed a program to integrate nutrition, statistics, and psychological decision-making. First, undergraduate students demonstrated a limited understanding of how dietary manipulation impacts overall nutrient consumption. A 30-minute presentation highlighted how variability in meal selection impacted the daily recommendations for calories, fiber, sodium, protein, saturated fat, and added sugar. Second, student healthy and unhealthy food decision-making appeared to be associated with conflict management styles. We were interested in exploring intrapersonal and interpersonal conflict styles in relation to dietary choices. Participants were traditional nursing students (56 freshman, 78 sophomore), and 58 nursing students in the accelerated program. They completed the intrapersonal food choices questionnaire (IFCQ) and the interpersonal conflict handling styles questionnaire (ICHS); (Leung & Kim, 2007). The IFCQ is an adaption of the ICHS reflecting conflict between healthy and unhealthy food choices. The second year students (N=76) and the accelerated (SDAP, N=53) students completed the IFCQ and ICHS as comparison groups designed to replicate the intrapersonal and interpersonal findings from the first year students. Cox (2003) reports the importance of intrapersonal and interpersonal comparisons. Quantitative & Qualitative Results: (1) the analysis of the cognitive knowledge pre-post questions found the 30-minute intervention was significant (dependent t-test, p=.001); (2) qualitative theme analysis (based on open-ended questions) revealed meaning, relevancy to nursing practice; and (3) the interdisciplinary team reported experiential learning. Correlational significance (p<.01) was found for four interpersonal/intrapersonal conflict types (i.e., compromising, integrating, obliging, avoiding/smoothing).

Biography

Dale M. Hilty, Associate Professor, received his PhD in counseling psychology from Department of Psychology at the Ohio State University. He has published studies in the areas of psychology, sociology, and religion. Between April 2017 and April 2018, his ten research teams published 55 posters at local, state, regional, national, and international nursing conferences. His colleague sharing the author line of this poster is Aimee Shea, MPH, RDN, CSO, LD.

E-mail: dhilty@mccn.edu