LAST WEEK OF INTERNSHIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HOLY CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My bad for not posting again up until now, but things have been cray.  I'm stupid busy at the hospital all day err day doing my staff relief and finishing up all the evaluations and projects that are due at the end of internship.  Soon... soon.

Since my last blog about this rotation, things have improved substantially. I'm much more comfortable with renal nutrition and education, though I'm still learning new things every day.  My preceptor and I came to a mutual understanding of each other - I understood what she expected of me, and she understood how to guide me.  Internship isn't just about gaining clinical knowledge and skills, it's also about gaining interpersonal skills, learning your learning style, and participating fully in your own learning - being that I was the first intern that my preceptor has ever had, she taught me with a style that worked for her but most definitely did not work for me.  We learned together what I needed, how to express it into words, and make changes so that we would be able to work well together and help me get the most out of the rotation.

The last few weeks I've been working all by myself as a legit RD doing my staff relief.  My preceptor is away on vacation, leaving me in charge of all of her patients.  This means that I'm running by myself - making decisions and recommendations for my patients' care, consulting with other professionals who see me as a professional rather than "just a student", getting paged for consults, and managing a full caseload of patients (I see somewhere between 7-15 people per day).  I do have a "resource RD" available to me, basically an RD acting as my preceptor while she's away who I can ask questions or consult with things that I don't know what to do with.  But other than that, it's all me.  It's been pretty awesome to see what working as a real RD is like, and feeling fully responsible for my patients!

My next update will come after I've officially graduated from internship!!!!  After next Friday, I will officially be done this chapter of my life.  All of the school, the volunteering, the struggling, the sacrificing, the late nights and early mornings, the buckets of coffee, the smiles and the tears, the empty bank account, and the 10 month epic adventure in dietetic education all comes to an end on August 8th.  After that day, I'll be eligible for registration with the College of Dietitians of Ontario, a day I've been longing for since the day I applied to Ryerson, way back when this blog first started four years ago.

Here goes...