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