I don’t know what a “typical” dietetics internship looks like, but I’m willing to bet that this isn’t it.<\/p>\n
I arrived at work on the first day of my fourth week of clinical rotations to discover that my preceptor’s mother had died–which meant my preceptor would be gone for a week. Which meant the medical-oncology floor would be missing a dietitian.<\/p>\n
I have to say the experience has knocked me off balance a bit–but I think I’m finally finding my feet. And I’m sure I’ll be a stronger dietitian because of it. Allow me to elaborate:<\/p>\n
Site visitors from ADA came to inspect the internship. The interns ate breakfast with them and answered questions.<\/p>\n
I arrived at work an hour and a half later than normal. I discovered that Mary’s mother had died. I realized that two other dietitians were already off. I realized that left me and two dietitians to handle the whole hospital. I freaked out. (Okay, not exactly–only in my mind.)<\/p>\n
I’m not sure what I did on Monday, except that I saw a lot of patients and looked over a lot of charts. And stayed an hour and a half later than normal.<\/p>\n
I arrived at work ten minutes earlier than usual. I knew I needed to be at the top of my game. I gathered up the new referrals for my floor. Dear heavens, there were about a hundred. And all my old patients were still around. I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off. But I did manage to see all the patients.<\/p>\n
I realized there was no way that I could continue seeing every single patient every single day. There are just too many of them. I noticed the system the other dietitians were using to determine when they needed to see a patient again. It’s brilliant. Crazy I hadn’t figured that out already. And kind of funny that no one showed me. Oh well!<\/p>\n
I had a collection of patients that I wasn’t sure what to do with at the end of the day. One of the other dietitians walked me through the process. I felt like I was learning in hyperdrive. Just watching her flick back and forth, hearing her questions went loads towards helping me develop the all-important clinical judgment.<\/p>\n
What about their BM’s? I’d never even thought to check on those before. Considering IV fluids to account for sharp drops in blood values. Balancing one diagnosis with another. It was fascinating. I worked an hour and a half longer than usual.<\/p>\n
By the time I got home, I’d determined that I needed a new assessment worksheet. I needed a worksheet that would enable me to arrange my information in a way that will allow me to RAPIDLY reassess a patient–instead of wasting so much time trying to figure out where I’d written that particular bit of information. I drafted a new worksheet while watching “That Thing You Do” with my sisters.<\/p>\n
I arrived at work to find a whole new slew of patients. But I already had at least 8 patients that I needed to follow up with and chart on. That means I wouldn’t have time to handle all 7 or 8 new patients. So I picked out three and got started.<\/p>\n
I only used my personal assessment sheets on the new patients–I didn’t want to waste time copying information that’s already there. But I’m noticing that it takes half as much time to do a chart review with my assessment. Yay for efficiency!<\/p>\n
The only thing I can’t speed up is the other clinicians–and the patients and their families. I still wait outside of doors for the doctor to finish his consult. Or, even worse, for the entire family (of a dozen or so) to leave the room so I can speak to the patient in relative peace. I still spent plenty of time criss-crossing the floor waiting for charts and patients to become available.<\/p>\n
But I got nine patients seen and charted–and I didn’t even need to ask for help (except for one patient, for whom I couldn’t discover a nutrition problem warranting charting). And I left at the time I normally do (did). I had to defer one new admit and one follow up visit due to the patients not being available. But all in all, I felt good about how things went. Especially because there are only three follow-ups due tomorrow.<\/p>\n
On the way home, I realized that I’m going to be gone all Friday at a conference. Which means I need to follow up with everybody who’s “due” on Friday tomorrow. Except that on Fridays I have to follow up with everybody who’s “due” over the weekend. Meaning that tomorrow, I have: 1 new admit left over from today, 1 follow up left over from today, 3 Thursday follow ups, 6 Saturday follow ups, and 7 Sunday follow ups That’s a grand total of 18 patients–all of whom I have to document. And that’s not including new admits.<\/p>\n
Yikes!<\/p>\n
So if you have a few prayers to spare, you can drop a line for me and my patients. Pray that I’ll have clarity of mind and efficiency–but that I’ll provide top line care. Pray that I’ll know who to cover myself and who I need to hand off to another dietitian. And above all, pray that my patients show dramatic improvement and can be discharged before I have to see them tomorrow! (Not all of them–I’d settle for half maybe ;-P)<\/p>\n
Mm-hm. This is what you could call a steep learning curve. I’m just praying that tomorrow doesn’t knock me off the balance I’ve so recently started to attain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don’t know what a “typical” dietetics internship looks like, but I’m willing to bet that this isn’t it. I arrived at work on the first day of my fourth week of clinical rotations to discover that my preceptor’s mother had died–which meant my preceptor would be gone for a week. Which meant the medical-oncology … Read more Finding my feet<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}