Shannon Librizzi - Region 11

​Hi everyone! My name is Shannon Librizzi and I am a region 11 Sodexo intern in the tail end of my dietetic internship! I started my rotations in the Denver Metro Area in February and am on track to finish in November. Since starting, I have completed my food service rotation at a university, my clinical, patient services, and CNM rotations at a level 1 trauma center, my LTC rotation at a local assisted living/SNF facility, and split my community nutrition hours between WIC, a kidney and liver transplant clinic, and Sodexo’s Nutrition and Wellness Center. I have chosen outpatient oncology nutrition for my specialty rotation and am excited to complete that over these last 5 weeks. 
 
I really appreciate the variety of settings I have been exposed to throughout this internship. After having a lot of hospital food service experience through my part-time job while in grad school, I liked being able to see how food service and the RD role differed in a university setting. And through my Retail Marketing Project I even made the business case for them to implement protein smoothies as a reoccurring menu item to increase sales and student satisfaction!
 
I also surprisingly enjoyed my LTC rotation (I wasn’t sure if I would) because it had similar aspects to outpatient, which I am drawn to because I like being able to follow up with the same patients overtime and establish rapport with them. Similarly, I really loved my time at WIC and it has made me highly consider pursuing a career working with this population. However, it was the extensive clinical rotation experience prior to these two experiences that truly made me comfortable interacting with patients at bedside, conducting nutrition focused physical exams, and calculating tube feeding and TPN recommendations. I also had the opportunity to attend daily cardiac, neuro, and trauma ICU rounds on a rotating basis which was really interesting and emphasized the integral role that RD’s play as part of the overall patient care team.
 
I am grateful for all of my preceptors thus far and my internship directors for their support and guidance throughout this process and can confidently say that all of these experiences have made me feel super prepared for the RD exam as I begin to shift my focus more towards studying for the exam! Wish me luck!

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