All posts by Amanda Ellis

First Key Experience

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Description: My first key experience was volunteering with the Healthy Start Breakfast Program at Central Elementary in Port Coquitlam. This position gave me the opportunity to work in a a diverse team of volunteers and teachers to prepare healthy breakfasts for thirty children three days per-week.

Personal Reflection: This experience gave me first hand experience working in a diverse team of people towards the common goal of preparing delicious and nutritious breakfasts for children at an inner city school. Overall I feel that this experience helped me achieve some of the nutrition care traits outlined in the Integrated Competencies for Dietetic Education and Practice (ICDEP).

Working in a diverse team consisting of teachers, school board staff, the principal of the school as well as parent and student volunteers, gave me first had experience of what it is like to work in and coordinate a diverse team of people. I believe that this has given me experience developing strategies to communicate nutrition related information with students and other team members, as well as identifying the roles of team members in supporting the implementation of a plan as is outlined in the ICDEP. In this position it was important for me to be able to communicate with different members of the team effectively to ensure that the breakfast was made on time meeting both nutrition and safety standards so that the children had time to eat, and would not be late for class. This allowed me to develop my communication skills as I had to be able to effectively communicate with all members of the team which ranged from grade two students through to teachers and parents.

This experience also gave me the ability to recognize the role of each person in the team and support them in their position. It also gave me a valuable experience to further prove that when everyone, my self included, fills their own role successfully and supports those around them, very large tasks impossible for one person to complete become achievable.

I believe that the experiences I gained by volunteering with The Healthy Start Breakfast Program will prove beneficial as I continue through the Dietetics program, and on to a career in the field.

Specific Competency Indicators Addressed: 

Nutrition Care 3.03 D: Identify strategies to communicate nutrition care plan with client, interprofessional team and relevant others

Nutrition Care 3.03 C: Identify the roles of team members in supporting the implementation of a care plan.

Second Key Experience

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Description: A second key experience I had that contributed to be growing as a future dietitian was volunteering as a visiting volunteer at Ridge Meadows Hospital.

Personal Reflection: Empathy is a key attribute required to be a compassionate and understanding Dietitian. Visiting elderly patients on the Patient Assessment to Home unit at Ridge Meadows Hospital gave me an invaluable experience that I believe helped me to develop as an empathetic listener. Patients staying on the unit where I was volunteering were often in transitional stages in their lives going  from living on their own to moving on to living in group or care homes. This was often very hard on the individuals, and they would often share with me how they were feeling about the transitions they were going through. Although I found it difficult at times to see some of theses individuals upset about their current situation, it gave me an invaluable opportunity to further develop as an empathetic listener, listening to what they were saying, and show compassion for what they were going through.

This experience also enabled me to develop as a patient listener. In addition to people transitioning in their living situations, there were also a number of people suffering from Alzheimers and Dementia. While visiting with theses individuals, they would often forget what they were talking about, or repeat something they had perviously said. This gave me a uniques perspective into how to effectively carry a conversation with such people, allowing them to continue on with their story regardless of if they lost their place or repeated themselves, without suggesting that they had repeated themselves or changed topics.

As a Dietitan I believe the empathetic and patient listening skills I developed Volunteering at Ridge Meadows Hospital will provide a fantastic foundation to build upon to becoming an empathetic and compassionate health care provider.

Specific Competency Indicators Addressed: 

Communication and Collaboration 2.04 E: Demonstrate Empathy

First Key Experience

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Description: My first key experience was volunteering with the Healthy Start Breakfast Program at Central Elementary in Port Coquitlam. This position gave me the opportunity to work in a a diverse team of volunteers and teachers to prepare healthy breakfasts for thirty children three days per-week.

Personal Reflection: This experience gave me first hand experience working in a diverse team of people towards the common goal of preparing delicious and nutritious breakfasts for children at an inner city school. Overall I feel that this experience helped me achieve some of the nutrition care traits outlined in the Integrated Competencies for Dietetic Education and Practice (ICDEP).

Working in a diverse team consisting of teachers, school board staff, the principal of the school as well as parent and student volunteers, gave me first had experience of what it is like to work in and coordinate a diverse team of people. I believe that this has given me experience developing strategies to communicate nutrition related information with students and other team members, as well as identifying the roles of team members in supporting the implementation of a plan as is outlined in the ICDEP. In this position it was important for me to be able to communicate with different members of the team effectively to ensure that the breakfast was made on time meeting both nutrition and safety standards so that the children had time to eat, and would not be late for class. This allowed me to develop my communication skills as I had to be able to effectively communicate with all members of the team which ranged from grade two students through to teachers and parents.

This experience also gave me the ability to recognize the role of each person in the team and support them in their position. It also gave me a valuable experience to further prove that when everyone, my self included, fills their own role successfully and supports those around them, very large tasks impossible for one person to complete become achievable.

I believe that the experiences I gained by volunteering with The Healthy Start Breakfast Program will prove beneficial as I continue through the Dietetics program, and on to a career in the field.

Specific Competency Indicators Addressed:  Nutrition Care 3.03 D: Identify strategies to communicate nutrition care plan with client, interprofessional team and relevant others Nutrition Care 3.03 C: Identify the roles of team members in supporting the implementation of a care plan.

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

Healthcare Team Challenge

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Event Description: The second Inter-professional Passport event I chose to attend was the Healthcare Team Challenge. This event consisted of two teams composed of individuals from all of the health care programs, to prepare a care plan based on a given case study, and present their plan to a panel of judges as well as a live audience. Although they prepared their plans before the presentation, during the event, they were given two twists that they were to develop recommendations for as a team and then present them to the audience.

Reflection: I found this event to be fascinating! When I initially decided to attend this event, I thought it would be an interesting presentation, further emphasizing the importance of an inter-professional healthcare team to providing superior patient care that was introduced at the Inter-Professional Healthcare Mixer. Although the presentation did build on such concepts, it ended up doing much more for my own appreciation of the importance of an inter-professional healthcare team.

First of all I thought this was a fantastic opportunity for the students involved, allowing them to get a glimpse of what it is to be part of a team of people with many different back grounds working towards a common goal. This is an opportunity that is often not given to students until they are in a practicum or actual workplace setting. I feel as though this is a great way for students to experience what it is to work in such a team, but without the pressure of caring for a living person. I really liked how they were presented a dynamic case with many interplays, that I believe would be representative of real cases they will face in the future. This provides a great opportunity for people to engage in dynamic reasoning rather than just the linear reasoning that is often associated with academia. I also appreciated the twists that were thrown in that required the teams to use their critical thinking skills in a time sensitive manner. It really highlights how patient care is ever changing, and how although a patient or case may come in with a certain set of circumstances, they are not static, but rather ever changing thus requiring a healthcare team to make new decisions, or to re-evaluate previous ones. I am confident that the participants gained some fantastic insight through this experience, but I have to say even though I was only a spectator, I did as well.

This truly was a learning experience for me. Even as a student in a professional health care program, I have to admit that I was not aware of the large number of people it takes to comprise a comprehensive healthcare team. I had always considered a health care team to consist of doctors and dentists, nurses, dietitians, therapists and pharmacist. I had never really considered that a number of other professionals including audiologists, and social workers would be considered as part of the core healthcare team. I can humbly say that this experience has proven me wrong. As this care of the family in Northern BC highlighted, the social worker and audiologist as well as the dental hygienist, played roles that would not have been able to be nearly as well addressed had they not been included. The second insight this experience gave me was how there are notable overlaps in a number of the healthcare roles. When the second twist came, and the sole family doctor became ill and unable to practice, the overlap of roles within the rest of the healthcare team enabled the missing role to be filled. Although a healthcare team would be stressed with the additional responsibilities, because of the overlap of expertise, collectively the role would be able to be adequately filled, without having a substantial impact on patient care.

Well, this truly was another excellent experience that took my learning outside of the lecture halls, and countless Power Point slides and into the real world. I have truly gained a further appreciation for the role of a healthcare team, and I hope to perhaps further my learning from the Healthcare Team Challenge, but next time from the stage rather than in the audience!

Networking Reflection

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Today was my first meeting with my fourth year, senior mentor and the rest of my group, and it was such a fantastic experience! There are four people in total in my group including Kaitlin Berris, who is our fourth year mentor, as well as Laree, Esther and myself making up the third years. Upon introducing ourselves, it became apparent that we all had quite different journeys getting into the program, as well as have quite different paths we hope to take once we graduate.  It was a very interesting experience for me because, it gave me appreciation for how different the backgrounds of people in the programs are, and diverse the profession is. For example, of the four of us, one person hopes to get into sports nutrition, one hopes to get involved in proactive healthcare through nutrition, while the remaining two were hoping to get involved in the clinical aspects nutrition. This affirmed for me one of my favorite aspects about the dietetics profession, which is how within a single profession, there are so many diverse career opportunities a person can take. I hope to take advantage of this opportunity, by getting involved in many different aspects, including clinical, preventative healthcare, as well as possibly publishing a cookbook focusing on Asian type cuisines.

In addition for giving us a greater appreciation for the professions diversity, Kaitlin was also able to give us some fantastic advice as we move forward in the program. She encouraged us to get involved with everyone in our class, and as a group try to organize events and gatherings to all get together. The small class size, and common interests of our class gives us a unique opportunity for getting to know each other on a deeper level than other programs do. For example arranging get together, and getting to know everyone if someone was in the medical class would be near impossible because there are three hundred people in the program. I think we as a group should take this opportunity given to us to maintain unity between everyone to make the program even more enjoyable, and to form relationships that could likely carry forward into our professional careers.

Kaitlin also encouraged us to get involved in learning opportunities outside of the classroom, to give us opportunities to expand our learning as well as network. She suggested attending some of the Inter-professional Passport events, as she had found these to be great opportunities to learn about some of the other health professions we will be collaborating with in the future, as well as to network with people that are in the Dietetics profession. Although it is early in the program, I hope to become involved in such events to gain experiences and interactions that cannot come from textbooks and lectures. I think this is great advice because such events will bring a human, and interaction component into the rather text based University model of teaching. Such opportunities enable individuals to tailor their learning in a way that gives them more exposure to areas they are interested in than can be offered through classes.

Overall I found this to be a very insightful experience thus far, and look forward to meeting and collaborating with my group members as we go through the Dietetics program together.

Inter-professional Health Mixer

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Event Description: 

This event brought together first year students from the different professional healthcare programs including Dietetics, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacology among numerous others. This event provided the opportunity interact with our future colleagues, and gain insight into the importance of an inter-professional healthcare team in providing superior patient centred care.

Reflection: 

Over all I found attending the Inter-professional Heath mixer to be an insightful, and enjoyable experience. As this mixer was intended for students in the first years of their respective programs, I thought it was a great opportunity to form some connections with people in other fields, before we are all subjected to potential biases and opinions from specific professions.I think the fact that the event included only first year student, right when we are starting in are programs was very beneficial. As I said above, although I think that healthcare professionals must always communicate in a manner that treats everyone as equals, I feel that as people move forward in their careers, their views will solidify, and that they may become biased in their opinions. This may add an extra layer of complexity when coming together as an inter-professional health care team. I believe that opportunities such as these will help a number of people, including myself, work more efficiently in teams, and will help them be more self aware of how they share their views in a group. I also feel that having the event at the beginning of the semester, when we are all new to our programs was a great idea. I feel that this left people more open to interacting with people outside of their profession, as not enough time has passed for groups of close friends to form within each program. This likely would have caused individuals to interact mainly with people in their own programs, rather than people from other programs.

This experience also gave me further in sight to the amount of knowledge that can be achieved by bringing together many people of different specialties. The team I was in was quite diverse having each of a medical, nursing and dietetics student, as well as two pharmacology students. This diversity of knowledge became very apparent to me when we were completing the case study, which included medical, medication, and nutrition related aspects. It was quite interesting, because as we were going through the case, each of us brought insight to the case from the perspective of our own fields of study. For example, I as the dietetics student was able to contribute possible effects caused by a high intake of vitamin A, while the pharmacology students we able to identify the purpose of the mentioned medications, and the medical and nursing students were able to suggest causes for the physical symptoms. Collaboratively we worked together to successfully come up with the three most probable challenges the person in our case study may face. This outcome would not have been achieved without collaboration, because none of us as individuals have all the knowledge that we were able to accumulate as a group.

This experience really opened my eyes to how important the incorporation of different areas of expertise are to provide superior patient centered care, and how everyone on a healthcare team really work as equals rather than in a hierarchy.  I thoroughly enjoyed this experience, and hope to have other such collaborative opportunities in the future.

Welcome!

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Hello everyone and thank-you for visiting my blog! This is an exciting endeavour for me as this will be my outlet to share all of my experiences as I go through the Dietetics program! Stay tuned for updates as I embark on my journey to becoming a Registered Dietitian!