October 2014

Tutorial Leadership

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Our tutorial focused on the topic of ethical decision making in professional settings. This tutorial provided a fantastic opportunity for my group members and I to explore a topic that is not generally given much thought on a daily basis. While preparing this tutorial, it brought to mind how decision making is something we do multiple times on a daily basis, but generally do not give much thought. Exploring the concept of ethical decision making also made me realize what a complex process it can be. It made me think projectively to being a practicing dietitian, and how I myself may face scenarios such as the one faced in our featured case with Mary. In such a situation, it will be beneficial to have the knowledge to undergo a systematic process to achieve the best possible outcome in regards to decision making. In addition to being a great reflective experience for myself, it also gave me valuable tools to creating similar presentations in the future.

Although I believe our tutorial went quite well overall, our classmates were able to provide some valuable insight into areas that we can improve that I would have never considered. First of all, the case we chose was quite lengthy, and from the feedback we received was quite intimidating. Prior to our presentation I had not considered this, but once pointed out it was quite evident. In the future I will take this into consideration in regards to both presentations and cases, and try to look at it from the audiences perspective, to ensure that they are not too overwhelming or tedious. A second piece of feedback that we got was that the outline to decision making we chose to use from the Canadian College of Dietitian’s was quite long, and that a number of groups did not have enough time to apply all of the steps to the case. In hindsight, we should have taken the ten steps and streamlined them into a more applicable framework given the short amount of time we had. Taking this into consideration, I will make a conscious effort in the future to ensure that components of presentations fit better into the allotted time by testing it out prior to the presentation.

Overall creating this tutorial was a fantastic learning experience that provided me with both an opportunity for personal reflection, as well as a chance to gain pointers on how to improve future presentations.

Purdy Pavilion Site Visit

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Description: For our site visit we visited the kitchen facilities at the Purdy Pavilion of UBC hospital. This facility is responsible for preparing meals for the patients of the long term care facility, as well as the hospital and the mental health facility. 

Experience: This experience gave me valuable insight into the role a Dietitian serves as a Food Service Director. Our host, Mohsen Saberi is a Registered Dietitian, who works as the Food Service Director for the Purdy Pavilion. In this position, he is responsible for overseeing and managing the preparation of menus and meals for approximately three hundred forty patients in the residential care home, mental health facility, and acute care wards. His numerous responsibilities include ensuring patient and employee safety, balancing the budget, training new supervisors and dietary technicians, and ensuring that food safety and nutrition standards are met. Learning about Mr. Saberi’s role as a Food Service director gave me valuable insight into the roles Dietitians can have outside of a direct counselling position.

Prior to the site visit at Purdy Pavilion, I had little experience into what the role of a Dietitian is in a director type position. Through my explorations into the field of dietetics during my application process, I was aware that such director and management positions existed, but I never had the opportunity to gain first hand exposure to what the jobs entailed. After completing the site visit, I was struck by how the field of Dietetics is even broader in scope than I previously thought. My Volunteering and shadowing with Dietitians up to this point has mainly involved working with community, public health and clinical Dietitians that were more involved with the counselling of patients, rather than a management aspect. From these experiences I had developed the idea that this Dietitians primary positions revolved around counselling patients. However, after this experience I can say that I was incorrect, and that the scope of Dietitians roles extend beyond just direct patient counselling and assessment, and into the multifaceted management positions such as Mr. Saberi’s, required to ensure the smooth operation of hospital and care home kitchens.

This experience has peaked my curiosity into exploring the field of Dietetics to an even greater depth to find what other positions this diverse field has brought people to.

Final Report: residential.UBC. Saberi. Site Visit Report. 2014 jjl edits