International research program between medical schools: the relevance of clinical research training in nutrition

Introduction: This paper is the compilation of two reports and presentations by medical students from Martin University, Slovakia, during their international intercampus training to promote "Clinical Research: Standing Committee on Research Exchange of the International Federation of Medical Students' Associations." Materials and methods: The students developed a clinical research training project in nutrition during July 2010 at the Unit of Nutrition and Metabolism of the Institute of Molecular Medicine (Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon) in collaboration with the Radiotherapy Department of Lisbon's Santa Maria University Hospital. Results: 1) The students learned to apply specific methods in scientific research, e.g. doing literature searches in the international PubMed database and creating a bibliographic database using the reference management software EndNote®; 2) they wrote two reports on predefined topics; 3) they prepared and presented the results using PowerPoint®. This training was also directed towards making the students familiar with nutritional sciences, a poorly known subject field to them because it is not included in the medical curriculum; this was indeed the central reason for their choice. In addition, the students took part in the hospital routine at the Radiotherapy Department and practiced body composition evaluation; all these activities aimed to promote the students' involvement in ongoing clinical nutrition research. Conclusions: These projects were designed to develop and expand medical students' knowledge in clinical nutrition in a real-life setting, as well as to foster effective learning and application of internationally accepted methods in the context of nutrition evaluation and research.