I am in my third week at my job and am happy to let the world know I am finished training! I will be on my own starting this Friday working with the postpartum, medical, and surgical patients. I am a little nervous, but I feel pretty comfortable especially since normal training lasts another week or so but my supervising dietitian thinks I am already ready. In the meantime, I have FOUR days off during a surprisingly spectacular sunny October week.
Although I would love to put in 8 hour days at the beach, I really need to study for my DTR exam. Especially because (drum roll please) the supervising dietitian wants me to start training with the current diet tech in the office in about a month! There are currently two diet techs on staff (makes sense because there needs to be one on duty everyday) and one is retiring after working at this hospital for 26 years, wow! She has incredibly big shoes to fill, but I can't think of someone better to train me! In the meantime, I want to get my certification ASAP so I have it done and out of the way. From what I can observe, the diet tech on duty receives the patient's meal requests that the hostesses put into the computer. It is the diet tech's responsibility to make sure the meal is balanced and appropriate to the patient's diet order (i.e. a patient with a carb control diet cannot have fruit and juice for breakfast therefore the tech will alter it to fruit and a diet cranberry juice).
There is so much to study for the DTR test! Of course there is a broad spectrum of clinical topics ranging from carb counting to diverticular disease to renal diets. There are also topics from the food service category including management, temperature control, and costing. And don't forget food science! I'm also brushing up on maillard reactions, egg coagulation and syneresis, and the differences between soluble and insoluble fiber. These are all things I can think of off the top of my head; there are just so many different questions that could pop up on this test! Luckily, I have a study guide a previous student gave to one of my teachers from college that I have been using.
[Sidebar, can I tell you how happy I am right now!? I don't want to jinx said happiness, but so many things in my life are amazing and I am cautiously waiting for it all to crash down. Moving away from the city and friends I loved to doggy paddle to keep my head above the waters of uncertainty, unemployment, and unhappiness left me with some dark days this summer. Now I feel happy and that I have a purpose. I am on a path and can see hazy images of my life as a Registered Dietitian. In fact, my supervising dietitians are hoping I can stay on as a tech on weekends if I start a local DI next year. They even went so far as to say that if I stayed and showed commitment, they could add me to their staff of RD's once I was certified. WHAT?! It's very far down the line, but who wouldn't want to hear that?!
I've also been unexpectedly losing weight since I started working. I was trying to get in better shape this summer to lose my beer/fireball/wine/tritip/baconwrappedhotdog belly from my last crazy quarter of college. I ate healthier, worked out, and monitored everything on a great ap called My Fitness Pal. However, I didn't really see any results. All of a sudden I start working full time and am down 7+ lbs. I don't completely understand why this happened. Maybe it does take a couple of months to get noticeable results. I do think it is helpful that I am on my feet, delivering trays, and pushing carts for 8 hours. Another factor would be waking up earlier and going to bed earlier. If I'm not up late, I'm less likely to get late night munchies. My weight loss has nothing to do with the amazing free hospital food either; last week alone I ate ceviche, blackened salmon, and carne asada tacos! So, I guess if you need to lose weight, start waking up before the sun and find a job where you're on your feet 40 hours a week :) ]
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