What?
I had the opportunity to attend Lion’s Gate Hospital to shadow dietitian, Tiffany Yeh, on the surgical ward. This was an intriguing option for me as I have had limited experience at an inpatient setting. Furthermore, I had never been to Lion’s Gate Hospital and had heard about their new iPad usage for taking meal orders from patients.
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So What?
As students, having the chance to shadow a dietitian gives us an opportunity to observe the day-to-day tasks that heir position entails. It gives us a look into parts of the profession that we would otherwise not observe until experiencing it first hand ourselves. It’s valuable to have this exposure before being immersed into the field for ourselves.

Things I valued:
– The dietitian was extremely friendly and approachable. She encouraged questions and gave me freedom with what I wanted to learn.
– I was able to follow a host up to the floor and observe her in taking meal orders from the patients and entering them into the iPad system
– I was able to sit in on rounds along with a nurse, two social workers, an occupational therapist, a physical therapist, the dietitian, and a discharge coordinator.
– We began talking to a fellow dietitian in the diet office who works upstairs at the Evergreen Long Term Care. Her role seemed very different compared to Tiffany’s. I would love to explore it further as it is somewhere I could see myself in the future.

Things I would have liked:
– To visit more patients with the dietitian. We spent much of the morning and afternoon discussing patients and in rounds, but did not have much time to actually visit any patients. This was one of my main objectives and unfortunately there was not much interaction.
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Now What?
I may contact the Long Term Care dietitian to set up a shadowing session with her at Evergreen. This seems like an area I would like to explore further. I hope that in FNH 480, we will be able to have a few more opportunities to shadow dietitians in various fields to extend our learning. I had a wonderful experience during this assignment and had a great debrief session learning about the experiences of others. I realized that each person had such a unique experience and that a dietitian’s role can be incredibly varied.
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• Year 3