N. Nguyen¹, A. Karim¹, M. Kucab¹, H. Moskowitz², and N. Bellissimo¹
¹School of Nutrition, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada
²Mind Genomics Associates, White Plains, NY 10617, USA

Despite increasing interest in patient-centred care (PCC) in dietetics, there are few studies that have examined how to individualize PCC to improve patient outcomes.

The objective of this study was to understand the mind and emotional signatures of Canadians when thinking about, or interacting with, a dietitian.

Canadian adults aged 18-44 years (n=201, 108 females, 93 males) evaluated a set of 24 systematically varied messages (16 messages in total) on a 5-point scale (1=does not fit at all, 5=fits me very well), following a permuted, repeated measures design regarding their affect emotions when thinking about, or interacting with, a dietitian. For each respondent, an individual-level equation was created relating the presence/absence of the messages to the stated likelihood of how well the messages describe them. Using K-means clustering, respondents were divided into different groups or mindsets (MS) based on their patterns of coefficients emerging from the regression modelling.

MS-1 respondents (n=103) were generally interested in dietitians but did not have any specific affect emotions when thinking about dietitians. MS-2 (n=36) responded to messages about the interplay between being free vs. constrained and connected vs. disconnected. MS-3 (n=32) responded to messages about adventure, taking action, and the interaction between the affect feelings about the past/future, and feelings about their inner and outer self. MS-4 (n=30) responded to messages about adequacy/inadequacy, and the interplay between the spiritual and physical.

In conclusion, the emerging mindsets transcend “who” the person is, and are created directly according to the specific topic of “how the person thinks” about dietitians.

By developing a series of mindset typing tools on a broad spectrum of topic areas valued by dietitians, this work has the potential to support dietetic practice by individualizing PCC.

Funded by Toronto Metropolitan University and Canadian Foundation for Innovation.