Macy Lang - Region 10

​I have had the opportunity to start my internship in the Food Service rotation. I have previously worked in many different roles in food service within a hospital setting, so I was curious to see what I would be doing differently compared to my previous experience. I believe this was an easier transition into the internship. Since I am more experienced with food service, I was less nervous entering this environment, whereas had I started with clinicals, I would feel less comfortable in this new organization.
 
I started off in the back of house with purchasing, where I learned about inventory and ordering. I am at a very large establishment that receives shipments every day, so there is a large quantity of food and paper products being used every day. I don’t have much experience with inventory and setting pars, so I was able to gain an understanding of how important it is, especially in such a large facility. They have an entire team of people just putting away their food and paper products. I also got the chance to help with floor stock, making sure each floor got all of the products they need to supply their floor.
 
I next moved on to the NICU, which I was pleasantly surprised to see in my rotation. Going into it, I was confused about what I would be doing since I hadn’t started my clinical rotation yet. This is a unique role and isn’t in every hospital. The diet techs refer to it as a luxury role since what they do is often what nurses have to do in other hospitals. They said they were there to help take some of the stress away from one more thing the nurses would have to do. We were mixing the baby formulas or adding fortifiers to expressed breast milk for the babies’ feeding. I had the opportunity to mix a formula for an infant; the mixture was composed of donated breast milk with an addition of a human milk fortifier, which is a high-protein solution that is added to milk. The attached picture is me making the formula.

Next, I moved onto the culinary side, where I worked with the chefs learning their day to day. We worked on making the schedule for the sous chefs and leads, completed a food safety and sanitation audit, attended a Sodexo district meeting, as well as learned about their food management system which is responsible for the creation of the menu for both patient and retail menus. We looked at the food waste that was logged for the last month. We pointed out trends in days with more waste, as well as what food items were more likely to be tossed. From this point, the Chefs and I discussed possibly adjusting portions to help limit waste.
 
I still have several more weeks to go in my food service management rotation but am very excited to see what else I can learn.