The aim of this study is to clarify the association between teaching and support skills and the subjective effectiveness of nutritional guidance of registered dietitians working at hospitals.

We carried out a questionnaire survey of registered dietitians at hospitals in a Japanese prefecture. The utilization of nutritional teaching skills in nutritional guidance was investigated using a self-produced 36-item questionnaire that was designed to be mainly used for diabetic patients in 4 settings: first guidance, first assessment, contemplation stage, and preparation stage. The support skills were evaluated by Kikuchi’s Scale of Social Skills: 18 items. The subjective effectiveness of nutritional guidance was defined by the behavioral change of the patients after nutritional guidance as evaluated by a registered dietitian.

There were 75 respondents (response rate 46.6 %). Among the teaching skills, basic skills in an interview were often used, but some related to coaching skills were not in common use in nutritional guidance. Based on the results of principal component analysis, we created a scale for scoring the utilization of nutritional teaching skills in each setting. Multiple linear regression analysis illustrated that high subjective effectiveness of nutritional guidance was associated with high score of teaching skills in the preparation stage setting and high score of support skills.

These results show that, in addition to frequent use of nutritional teaching skills, improvement of support skills is also necessary to enhance the effectiveness of nutritional guidance.