Last Semester Week 1

Happy New Year to you! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season!

Things are back in full swing now for my final semester as a Dietetic Student. Woohoo! I've almost made it!

Not much longer I will be wearing this!

My first week back consisted of introductions to our new sites and general organization for the semester to come. The first half of this semester is set up similarly to our first semester in the program. We are at several different locations, some of them are the same rotation sites we were at that first semester and we will work in small groups again. I am excited about the group I will be working with this semester, they are both extremely hard workers and very easy to get along with.

We will be working with a home meal delivery program, teaching cooking and nutrition classes for the food bank, working with WIC (Women, Infants, Children), the wellness, and nutrition and health programs at TCU, and teaching nutrition labs to the current TCU students. I am looking forward to these rotations, but anxious to see how one of them has "supposedly" changed from our first go around with them first semester.

Let's just say that site didn't leave a good taste in my mouth when we completed that rotation, I know I'm not the only one in this boat apprehensive to see how round 2 goes, I'll keep you updated.

 The second half of this semester is our culminating rotation (the location of our choosing) and I will be at one of the county hospitals in the area. I am looking forward to it, and interested to see its comparison to the hospitals I have worked in before. I knew I wanted to work in a clinical setting for my culminating hours, but I was also torn because I do eventually want to work as Renal Dietitian and was thinking working at a dialysis clinic would be a smart move. After discussing this with several of my professors, they suggested working at a hospital that sees a lot of kidney patients might be the best of both worlds!

Every time I hear those words, the theme song starts playing in my head...

I am hoping to keep you updated more often this semester, I will have a little more time since I'm not taking any scheduled classes. Plus hopefully I'll have more material being at several different sites throughout the weeks ahead.

~Brittani

"For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end." ~ Psalm 48:14

End of Third Semester

As winter break comes to an end, I realized I need to fill you in on my last rotation of the previous semester!

My final rotation of the semester took place at a Dialysis clinic working with patients with kidney disease. It was my favorite rotation of the semester and I was sad to only have the opportunity to be there for a week. The dietitian I worked with was awesome! She was incredibly knowledgeable, gave me some great professional pointers, had me help out and get involved whenever I could and allowed me to ask all the questions I wanted. She was fun and kind of goofy, which made me feel comfortable around here, plus I'm pretty goofy myself, so we got along really well.

I might be a little biased, because kidney disease is what I eventually want to do as a Registered Dietitian. (For now... I still have one more semester that may peak another interest in the dietitian realm, we shall see!)

Our first day started bright and early at 6am. I got to tour the clinic, visited with several patients and got the run down of a day as a renal dietitian. We also made recipes using Nepro for patients to try. Nepro is a nutritional supplement created for patients with kidney disease. The afternoon involved quality control meetings, which were long and boring (sorry). I think partly because I wasn't exactly sure of everything they were discussing, however we did get free lunch!

Day two started later in the afternoon, mainly wrapping up the end of the day at one of the locations and moving to another one for the remainder of the afternoon for another quality meeting. We took a roadtrip to Granbury for this one.

Day three began again early at 6am. It was Nepro Lobby day! We decorated a table in the front lobby with Nepro information, coupons and our recipe samples. We had made raspberry fruit pops and coconut pineapple parfait. The dietitian was trying to get her patients free Nepro by providing forms to complete and mail in to Nepro. I tasted them myself and they were good!

 

The afternoon was spent traveling to Plano for a Kidney Education Training session. The dietitian was being trained to teach Kidney Education classes and I had the opportunity to sit it on the session, unfortunately I cannot be certified myself since I am not an RD although I did sit through the training.... Oh well!

My final day was spent completing my education poster to be hung in the main waiting area for the patients. I was quite proud of myself and really liked my color scheme.

After all this fun came finals week to wrap up the end of the semester. I missed out on a girls weekend in Austin because of it, however I made the grades I wanted, so I guess it was worth it. I think it also helped because the weekend before finals week Andy was out of town for a football game with the boys, so I had the place to myself without ESPN playing in the background. (Love you! ;) )

~Brittani


"The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy." ~ Psalm 126:3