Waitaminute. That means I only have two weeks left in my first foodservice rotation (I have 8 weeks total, but split between 2 preceptors). Crap. I have a lot to do in the next two weeks. O___O.
Week 2 recap:
Well this one went a bit fast because there was a holiday weekend thrown in there. So we didn't actually start until Tuesday, which was spent with all of the interns doing foodservice on this rotation (4 of us) doing a day long orientation to nutrition services at the hospital. We met the staff, learned about their roles, and toured around the foodservices area to see all of the facilities. We followed the food from delivery to the hospital to the fridge/freezer to tempering to the belt line to the plates to the floors to the retherming units to the patients and back down to the basement for plates to be washed. I finally met my preceptor on Wednesday, and found out about my projects for this rotation...
One of my projects is to review the job descriptions of the dietary aides. These are the people who are responsible for reheating the food that comes up from the belt line, and delivering to patients (among many, many other things they do). I'm not looking to see how well they're doing their job, or to make big changes to their jobs - I'm looking more at whether what they're doing makes sense, and whether things could be more efficient so that the staff aren't so overloaded with responsibility. In order to figure out whether things are running well or not, I am shadowing the dietary aides. All of the dietary aides. Sometimes at 6:30 in the morning. On weekends. Seriously. Let's just go ahead and put another pot of coffee on, shall we?
Other than shadowing everyone, I'm also working on other projects, including doing an in-service education session for staff about proper handling of equipment, developing a policy for maintenance of the meal carts, and a temperature audit of food from delivery to patient service. On Friday I spent the day with a guy from a cart manufacturer company, who had these cool little temperature probe discs that we stuck into mashed potatoes and yogurt on a control tray, and recorded when the tray/food entered each part of service (on the belt line, waiting in the holding fridge, reheated, served to patient). Of course patients didn't receive this food, but it was taken on the journey as if it were :) At the end, the cart manufacturer guy pulled up a cool chart showing temperature fluctuations of the products throughout the service so that we could see 1. are things staying at a proper temperature while waiting to be portioned on the beltline, 2. how insulated are the carts, 3. how well are the retherm units actually reheating things, and 4. are things still hot when they get to patients. It was pretty neat to babysit mashed potatoes for a day and see its temperature fluctuations!
Week 3 recap:
This week started my job shadowing. I have now shadowed 6 staff in completely different shifts, and have 5 more left for next week. Since the aides are unionized, I'm not allowed to actually help them do anything like fill coffee cups or help push the carts or anything, so I'm really just hovering over them and following them everywhere, taking notes and asking questions. I'm not going to lie - it's a little boring to just watch someone do their job for 8 hours. Especially when its essentially the same job that you saw yesterday and will see again tomorrow. But the aides and their supervisors have been really helpful in answering all of myhundred thousand questions to help me with my projects. I've now managed to figure out a number of recommendations for the aides job descriptions that will help make their jobs more fluid and make the job description on paper make sense with the job that's actually being done, and I've also finished about half of my cart maintenance policy :)
I also got to participate in a few cool meetings this week, including an interview to hire a new dietary aide. Having now seen what the job entails in up-close detail, it was interesting to see the process all the way from the beginning, and to see how the hiring process works from the managerial side of things. My preceptor and I also attended a clinical nutrition committee, where a group of dietitians from various concerned areas of the hospital come together to discuss changes to diets being given to patients based on ever-changing research. In this meeting, most of the discussion centred around the anti-reflux diet and whether it was possible to reduce fat content to a low enough level to inhibit the reflux, but still leaving food palatable, giving patients their dietary needs daily, and provide enough variety.
Stay tuned for the next 2 week update, when I'll be wrapping up my first foodservice rotation!
Week 3 recap:
This week started my job shadowing. I have now shadowed 6 staff in completely different shifts, and have 5 more left for next week. Since the aides are unionized, I'm not allowed to actually help them do anything like fill coffee cups or help push the carts or anything, so I'm really just hovering over them and following them everywhere, taking notes and asking questions. I'm not going to lie - it's a little boring to just watch someone do their job for 8 hours. Especially when its essentially the same job that you saw yesterday and will see again tomorrow. But the aides and their supervisors have been really helpful in answering all of my
I also got to participate in a few cool meetings this week, including an interview to hire a new dietary aide. Having now seen what the job entails in up-close detail, it was interesting to see the process all the way from the beginning, and to see how the hiring process works from the managerial side of things. My preceptor and I also attended a clinical nutrition committee, where a group of dietitians from various concerned areas of the hospital come together to discuss changes to diets being given to patients based on ever-changing research. In this meeting, most of the discussion centred around the anti-reflux diet and whether it was possible to reduce fat content to a low enough level to inhibit the reflux, but still leaving food palatable, giving patients their dietary needs daily, and provide enough variety.
Stay tuned for the next 2 week update, when I'll be wrapping up my first foodservice rotation!
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