Day one is done. It. Was. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. I can't tell you how rewarding it is to put 4 years worth of knowledge in its arena. Why yes, I know what NPO means. You need to test the food for proper temperature? Well, the danger zone is 41-140 F. Coumadin? No leafy greens for you! There were also some things I was a little rusty on (like the dysphagia levels) but there's no better place to learn than in a hospital. I'm totally getting completely lost in the hospital for the next couple of months by the way. I wonder if the directions on my phone have a map for the building's maze, I mean layout.
Anyways. You know how I told you I wanted to be a baker when I grow up? I still do, duh. But maybe, just maybe, there is more in my professional future than abusing butter and sugar. That's right. I want to become an RD when I grow up. Except now I want to keep loving this position. And get my DTR certification ASAP. And probably bake 14 dozen cookies during the process. Plus the pb/chocolate cupcakes I need to make for Friday.
Shall I tell you about my day? Oh, alright. Twist my arm.
6:30 AM Arrive. Prepare trays of jello for the units we (the person training me+me) were responsible for. Today we did Postpartum (labor and delivery, my favorite, I saw hours old babies, gahh), Oncology, ICU, and Telemetry (cardio). We took these to the refrigerators in each department's kitchen station. Made sure to move old foods to the front and dispose of anything with a date today and older.
7ish Get trays from tray line and put on cart. Push cart to unit. Then we delivered the meals to each patient making sure we knocked on the door, told them who we were, gave them their food, checked to make sure the name on their bracelet or IV bag matched that on our order, and asked if there was anything else we could do for them. Once a unit was finished, we would get a cart for another. We don't deliver NPO meals or to those in isolation. It was also important to be aware of signs on the door. Some rooms required gowns and gloves if the patient had a certain illness.
8ish-3 Take that day's lunch and dinner orders for patients who had just been admitted. Then start taking breakfast/lunch/dinner orders for the next day. This was done until 11:15 when lunch had to be delivered. Then we worked on more orders until they were complete. The orders are all put into a computer that has each patient's diet order information and sent to the diet tech. Very cool.
What I learned:
-Patients in telly (telemetry) aren't allowed to have coffee or tea so it is not offered at all on that floor. They also don't get ham.
-Nurses are amazing people. No need to elaborate
-Kitchen staff are equally amazing and highly entertaining.
-This hospital has Vietnamese diet orders
-I forgot how many people are sick and in hospitals. This is going to sound corny, but it totally made me appreciate my health. My feet hurt because they weren't used to that much walking but it didn't seem that important after interacting with so many bedridden patients
Cool Things I saw
-Therapeutic dog. This hospital has about 10-15 volunteers that bring their groomed and clean dogs to patients. We met Andre who did about 7 tricks for an oncology patient we were taking an order from (high fives, shake, be ashamed, bow). The patient loved it, he had 5 dogs at home and the 5 minutes spent with the dog put him at ease.
-Speaker Phone Translators. Ok. So imagine you are trying to take an order from a patient and they don't understand English. Now, I know a good amount of Spanish. However, this day there were Vietnamese and Farsi speaking patients. Simply use a phone number to talk to an operator who puts a translator on the phone. Phone is on speaker and translator talks as if they are in the room with you. SO COOL.
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