So we realized that by the end of this rotation that erhmahgerd. We only have 8 WEEKS LEFT OF INTERNSHIP. Freaking. The eff. Out.
But, we'll get into the next steps in a bit. First, internship recap of the last 5 weeks at my community health centre (CHC) rotation!
I've been working at a CHC located about 2 blocks away from where I live, which has been just excellent because a) I can walk to work and have only used the subway maybe five or six times the whole rotation to get to offsite meetings, and b) this is my neighbourhood, and it's been super interesting to find out the demographics of people who live here and the food insecurity issues still present, even in a neighbourhood that appears generally to be quite affluent. CHCs have a reputation for being health centres only for the poor and marginalized, food insecure, recent immigrants, single parents, and people with other barriers to accessing health care at all. Certainly, that's how the CHC model began - to remove barriers preventing people from accessing health care and connect with communities to work on deeper underlying issues (such as housing, employment, food security). But, today's CHCs aren't places for only these marginalized and socially underserved groups - anyone can be served by a CHC. And, many have allied health professionals such as dietitians on staff, which you don't need a doctors' referral to see. However, CHCs do still focus on breaking down barriers and being accessible to people who would otherwise have limited access to health care, and provide many programs and services to clients for free.
One such program is the Kids Cooking Club, which I've been running for the last 5 weeks! I have a group of 8-12 year olds who come in once per week for 2 hours to learn basic cooking skills and basic nutrition. We have a focus on one food group each week (fruit/veg, grain, milk, meat/alternatives), and prepare 3 recipes focusing on those groups. The kids learn kitchen basics like handwashing and food safety, basic knife skills and food preparation (peeling, mashing, etc) and use the stove/oven to prepare meals that they can also make at home. We also strongly encourage the kids to try new foods - if they don't like it then that's fine, but we ask that they at least try once. After they eat their tasty treats, we have a nutrition lesson where I chat with the kids about the food group, how many servings per day they should aim for, what a serving size looks like, and how to make it fit into a day. My preceptor says that this year's group has been much less knowledgeable and more shocking than previous groups... their nutrition knowledge was near zero when they first started (most couldn't name all 4 food groups, for example), they were reluctant to try anything that wasn't meat and rice, their favourite healthy food on day one was blue KoolAid, and one 10 year old girl had never tried a tomato before in her entire life. Amazingly by week 4, we made a green salad (which I expected would end very badly with this group...), and they not only ate their portion, they lined up asking for more salad!!!!!!!!! SHOCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We gave the kids a knowledge questionnaire before the sessions started, and again on the last day to see what they had learned - I was very pleased to see that all but one kid scored substantially higher on the quiz on the last day :) *proud*
Other than the cooking club, I also worked on a few smaller projects, gave a 2 hour presentation to mostly older adults about nutrition myths, and did a lot of networking with other health professionals and people working at other CHCs. I didn't get too much patient care experience here, but despite that I still feel like I learned tons. Being in this environment taught me the importance of considering a client/patient's needs from all sides - they aren't just having nutrition issues, and that nutrition issue may not be at the top of their priority list. I also got a lot of excellent experience working with different age groups - in particular, all this time I've been working with kids is going to come in really handy when I get to my first post-internship job at the CDA Camp in August!
Next up: one last research week/catch up on life, and then two more rotations: renal disease, and staff relief (also going to be in renal). And then? Well friends, then we're DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
