Dietetic Internship Week #3

Another week of Food Service/Management in the books and boy it flew by (as they all have)! I’m over half-way through this rotation now so read on to see how it went!

Monday: This week was kind of like the calm before the project storm. Monday morning we started out with the usual accuracy audits of the meal trays. We then went on to catch up on our e-mails and communications with the RDs and Clinical Leader Managers of the units that we were going to be visiting for our project observations. We just wanted to let them know about our project and when we’ll be visiting their units. Just so no one would wonder who the random chicks on their floor watching people eat were (Note: People still wondered).

Tuesday: On Tuesday we had a quiet morning, and we were only at the hospital for half the day as we have our graduate class in the afternoon. In class we had two separate speakers. The first one was an RD from our hospital who talked to us about the Nutrition Care Process (NCP), charting, and the use IDNT language. We were also given a group charting assignment where we had to create a case study, pass it on to another group (and receive a case from another group) and then complete a chart note on it. The second speaker group talked to us about Interprofessional Education and Interprofessional Collaboration. It was a quick, interesting session!

Wednesday: On Wednesday we were prepping to head up on the units for observation for our project. We also had a little check-in meeting with our Dietetic Internship program director just to let her know how things have been going! During lunch hour we also did a little trial observation of mealtime on the GI and General Surgery unit, just to get an idea of how things are going to flow once our observations started. After our little trial, we had to make some revisions to our data sheets because the next day our real-deal observations started!

Thursday: On Thursday we started our mealtime observations for breakfast and lunch on the General Medicine floor. Basically for our observations we follow the porters up to the units with the meal carts, and we go in the patient rooms with them to observe if the patient is in their room, who else is in the room at mealtime (nurses, visitors, etc.) and why, and if the meal is placed within the patients’ reach. After meals are delivered we go back around and observe any interruptions that may occur throughout the time that the patients have their meal trays. Then, when the porter returns to collect the trays, we check the trays to see how much of the meal the patient completed (1/4 , ½, ¾, full meal, or none). So Thursday morning and early afternoon we did our observations for both breakfast and lunch. After that, we just did some admin work in our office before calling it a day.

Friday: Friday of Week 3! Half-way through our six-week Food Service/Management rotation. We continued with breakfast and lunch observations, this time on the GI/General Surgery floor. In the afternoon, we had our mid-rotation “evaluations” with our preceptor. Basically the mid-evals are for meeting with the preceptor, going over the competencies that we’re required to meet throughout the course of our rotations/internship as a whole, and we discuss where we’re at and what else we’re going to aim to accomplish by the end of rotation. After that, it was happy weekend to us! (I keep saying “we” and “us” because I have two fellow interns in this rotation with me, and we’re basically a team for all of our tasks/projects).

Friday night was basically relaxation for me, my boyfriend and I hit up the grocery store for a few ingredients to make homemade pizzas (we may have also snagged a doughnut or two).

Saturday we hit up a new coffee/juice place called Fuel+ right down the street from us.

Then we drove to the Toronto Premium Outlets for a little retail fun…mostly window-shopping for this chick though #unpaidinternshipproblems :). We ended up not getting home until about 8pm but we quickly changed and headed out for dinner to the most-recommended-to-me restaurant since I’ve moved to Toronto: Fresh! It’s a really popular vegetarian/vegan restaurant here, and now I know why! Everything was super tasty. Especially those quinoa onion rings (OMG.). I ordered the “Iron Man” salad that had falafel, hummus, greens, cucumber, grape tomatoes, crispy onions, and dried figs with a lemon/tahini dressing. Bf got the thai burger which was just as fabulous! After dinner, my boyfriend went on to explore Nuit Blanche (an all-night outdoor art event that happens once a year), while I headed home to hit the hay. All I ever want on the weekends since starting internship is a relaxing weekend with a good sleep on Friday and Saturday night. One of these days I’ll stay out later than 10pm…

And finally, Sunday is all about preparation for the next week for me. I went for my morning run, cleaned the apartment, prepped some food for the week, and met up with a classmate to finish an assignment.

That’s all for me! I know a lot of what I’ve been doing seems a tad repetitive, and it has been! But our project is coming together well and I think we’ll get a good result. Next week we’ll be finishing up our observations, starting our data analysis, and completing a few activities within the food service department as well. Stay tuned!!

 

Hannah