ETHICARE: Enhancing Ethical Competence in Primary Care Dietary Advice

Enhancing nutrition care in primary care is crucial for managing diseases and promoting health. However, healthcare professionals face numerous barriers in providing dietary advice, leading to underutilization.

The study ETHICARE focuses on the ethical aspects of dietary advice, aiming to explore challenges, coping strategies, and perceived competence of professionals. An educational intervention is implemented to improve ethical competence and reduce moral distress.

The research investigates barriers, handling of challenges, intervention effectiveness, and characteristics of ethical competence.

By bridging the gap in understanding ethical perspectives in nutrition care, this study contributes to a specialized body of knowledge. It offers insights into challenges, distress factors, and their impact on patient care. Innovative intervention strategies are developed and evaluated, leading to enhanced ethical competence among providers.

The study also aims to develop a framework for ethical competence in dietary advice, facilitating future research and discussion.

Qualitative interviews with dietitians and nurses in primary care will be conducted, as will quantitative measures, analysed descriptively and and comparatively .

Findings will deepen the understanding of ethical challenges and inform the development of effective interventions and frameworks for ethical competence in nutrition care.