Translation and application of behaviour change technique obesity training to a Spanish nursing undergraduate setting

Health professionals around the world are increasingly expected to tackle obesity by discussing health-related behaviour change with patients. The TEnT PEGS framework is a behaviour change communication toolkit which has been shown to be useful to increase health professional trainees’ skills and knowledge about behaviour change techniques. It does not exist behaviour change intervention toolkit in Spanish. Therefore, the objectives of this study were 1) to translate the TEnT PEGS framework into Spanish and apply in a Spanish nursing student population; 2) To analyse whether a training in the Spanish toolkit (DEPREMIO) had a positive impact on students’ skills to encourage obesity-related behavioural change. Nursing students (n=95) attended two face-to-face (2 hours per session) obesity management sessions delivered by two health psychologists. Students’ attitudes in promoting behavioural change increased significantly for both student groups. Moreover, training increased significantly most of students’ knowledge about behaviour change talk with a 0.5 level of significance and effects sizes were between .36 to .77. Hence, it seems that this adaptation is feasible for a Spanish nurse student population and to help them to achieve higher skills and attitudes in obesity management.