Hi everyone! My name is Genevieve Traversa and I am a region 5 intern. I am currently finishing my advanced clinical rotation and am about to begin my staff relief rotation at MedStar Montgomery Medical Center in Olney, MD. I was so nervous to start here, I imagine like most people are, but the staff at this hospital made the process so easy. When I first started clinical, I only started with 1-2 patients a day and didn’t know where to even begin. I had never done a nutrition focused physical exam on a patient before and had never had people looking to me as the authority on nutrition in healthcare. As I continued on, I began to become more and more comfortable with patients and now will typically see 6-8 patients a day! I have gotten to learn what I really love about clinical and what I struggle with.

I have ended up loving nutrition support, which includes calculating nutritional needs and then calculating enteral or parenteral nutrition for patients in a variety of disease states and severity of illness. When I calculate nutrition support, I feel like I have really solved a true problem and am making an immediate impact on care for the patient. ICU rounds have become one of my favorite parts of the day because it is where I feel most part of the team. However, I also found out I really struggle emotionally with patient family members when the situation is grave. The Sodexo internship has been so supportive and allowed me to change my concentration because of this to leadership! This will be the rotation I start in just a few weeks. In my leadership concentration, I will be given the opportunity to work in behavioral health, outpatient cancer treatment, wellness in a corporate setting, and dialysis patients.

Finally, as unfortunate as the situation is, it has also been really interesting and unique to see the precautions and how a hospital functions in a pandemic. We are currently placing anyone with a respiratory infection on droplet isolation. On the nutrition/food service side of things in the hospital, we are using paper trays for anyone suspected of COVID-19. The nutrition services general manager also has made sure to have a standardized set of food items on site for emergency.
​
Now, to all future interns, the best advice I can give you is to just show up and do your best to be open to learning anything and everything. There are going to be days that you feel amazing, and days that you feel defeated. There will be people you love, and people you struggle with. Try to take everything as a learning experience that you can grow from to be the best dietitian you can be for your future patients. Always remember, you know more than you think you do, and you are going to be amazing!

​Hi! My name is Sarah Shackelford, a Sodexo region 4 intern.   Up to this point, I have completed rotations in patient services, adult clinical, and long term care, along with a concentration in pediatrics.  Currently, I’m halfway through my staff relief rotation at A.I. duPont Children’s hospital in Wilmington, DE where I completed my concentration. The past 6 months have flown by and I cannot believe I only have two rotations left in the internship!
 
My pediatric concentration has been my favorite rotation thus far.  I’ve been privileged to learn from A.I. duPont’s team of knowledgeable and experienced dietitians who are mentoring me through caring for the pediatric population from a nutrition standpoint. I’ve seen a broad array of conditions from new onset Type 1 Diabetics to Glycogen Storage Disease type 0 (less than 10 cases in the world) and Cystic Fibrosis.  Completing both a concentration and my staff relief at a pediatric hospital allowed me to gain experience and confidence working with children and their families- a population I hope to serve in the future. 

​Throughout my internship I have been able to do one thing I love- teach!  During my adult clinical rotation at Jefferson Health Torresdale in Philadelphia, PA, I worked with another dietitian and nurse navigator to educate patients on dietary and lifestyle management of congestive heart failure.   Teaching other classes, like nutrition with pulmonary disease and eating around the holidays with diabetes, has been one of my favorite internship experiences.
 
Sodexo’s internship has truly given me an opportunity to grow as both a provider and a person. Prior to beginning the internship, I was nervous about patient care and making the best decisions for a patient from a nutrition standpoint. Through my rotations I have been able to develop my clinical judgement, hone my communication skills, and grow in my adaptation skills to new settings.  My advice to future interns? Take your time to enjoy every rotation, take each opportunity that comes your way, and soak in everything you can because before you know it, you will be finishing up the internship. 

Check out Ben's tips for being the best quarintern ;) you can be!

My name is Mimi Scheidt and I am a dietetic intern in region 3, New York City! I can’t believe I am already halfway through the dietetic internship - time is flying by! 

During the Sodexo internship, I’ve had great experiences in various settings. The internship, in its entirety, has provided me with multiple opportunities and connections that I am so grateful for. I loved being exposed to different settings as I figure out where I want to begin my career as an RD. From working in a hospital, law firm, WIC/food bank and Head Start in New York City, I can confidently say that I’ve seen all ends of the spectrum. These experiences cannot be obtained in a classroom alone, and I will value them throughout my career.

For my community rotation, I spent time at a Head Start, a WIC center, and a food bank. I am grateful for working at all of these places as I have had the opportunity to educate mothers, children, and families. For my food service rotation, I was placed at Weil & Gotschal Law firm.  It was such a unique experience being placed in a corporate setting for my food service rotation.

Currently, I am three months into my clinical rotation at NYP Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, NY. I felt like I had been preparing for this rotation ever since I started my education in nutrition.  I was both excited and nervous to begin as I had no idea what to expect. The minute I started at the hospital, I was thrown into screening patients and performing diet education sessions. Starting off, I was nervous, until I learned that the only way to get better is to practice. These are skills that you are not able to learn in a classroom. Reflecting back on my first few weeks, I can already tell how much more confident I have become when interacting with patients. I strive to ensure that I always obtain accurate and complete health information.

My favorite part about clinical is educating. People always think eating healthy is boring, but I love teaching patients that it doesn’t have to be! Often times patients don’t want to talk to the RD’s because they don’t want to change their diet or lifestyle habits. However, by the end of our conversations, people are usually willing to make 1 or 2 small changes. Hopefully after leaving the hospital they will continue to improve and follow my guidelines.

I am looking forward to the rest of my internship and getting the opportunity to learn as much as I can during this time through asking questions, observing, and interacting with patients. Every day I learn something new and it makes me excited to come in the next day!

Hello to all my fellow interns! My name is Pamela Santana, I am from region 12 based in San Diego, CA. I am so happy to say that I so far finished all of my clinical rotations! SHARP Healthcare dietitians have been nothing but wonderful teachers. I was fortunate enough to complete all my clinical rotations within SHARP Healthcare facilities and I enjoyed every site, especially my LTC rotation. I work as a diet technician at SHARP Coronado (which is where I did my LTC rotation and clinical management), so it was really awesome to come full circle from working in food service to learning how a dietitian collaborates with the food service staff to shadowing many meetings the clinical dietitian manger attends to in order to work with other departments of the hospital. Never thought that LTC would be one of my favorite rotations!
 
I started with my clinical rotation feeling extremely overwhelmed with everything that needed to get done. On my very first day of basic clinical, I was already getting my feet wet with enteral nutrition; I definitely hit the floor in running mode. However, slowly but surely, I moved along nicely. By the time I needed to present my research, I was feeling like I had a solid foundation to build off from. It was a bitter-sweet moment when I finished my clinical rotations. On one hand, finishing the assignments and long days at a hospital felt amazing. But on the other hand, I still wanted more time to learn even more!
 
Currently I’m starting my leadership rotation. So far, I’ve had the opportunity to shadow dietitians in an ICU and in a NICU. The NICU is another one of my favorite rotations. Additionally, I was able to shadow outpatient dietitians for bariatrics, diabetes, and eating disorders. I am really loving the outpatient environment. I like that there is more interaction and with a patient, more change to help educate and council. Also, I like that one can actually see the progress a patient has made and the impact a dietitian has had in that patient’s life.
 
Soon I will be starting my community rotation at Olivewood Gardens. I will be working in a community garden and have the chance to interact with kids, teenagers, adults, and seniors. Educating patients/people, I feel, is my strength and having experienced the outpatient environment has allowed my counseling skills to improve. A message to future interns: soak-up all the knowledge and skills from anywhere you go. Every site, location, setting, is an opportunity to learn and grow.

​Hi! My name is Seth Cowan. I am a region 5 dietetic intern and I am currently in my advanced clinical rotation at White Oak Medical Center, a community hospital in the D.C. suburbs. I spent my food service rotation at the same hospital, learning all about the controlled manner in which food is produced and delivered to patients, as well as the retail operation.  My retail and marketing project centered on the Sodexo Mindful initiative, which is Sodexo’s mission to deliver healthful food options that are also delicious. I was able to promote the initiative in the hospital cafeteria by offering Mindful recipes and clarifying the message that Sodexo promotes through this campaign. 
 
Following my food service rotation, I was eager to start my clinical rotation because that is my area of interest, and it has not disappointed!  I rotate among three registered dietitians who quickly gave me independence in performing assessments and charting on my own, and I have learned so much from their feedback and from listening in on the informal conversations in the dietetic office about their patients.  I have absorbed certain features of their assessment style and how they develop a plan of care for a patient.  
 
The dietitians have been so helpful in recognizing areas of opportunity and providing blunt feedback to help me master the art and science of practicing dietetics in a hospital setting. One of the biggest lessons I have learned is to focus the goals and interventions on areas we can try to control, such as a patient’s calorie intake and their wound healing. We work on an interdisciplinary team that includes many specialists who each have a specific role in patient care, and we need to be the expert within our work scope and remember our part in patient care we can directly influence. I also enjoy interacting with nurses and other team members because you learn about other areas that are tangentially related to a dietitian’s role but help piece together the patient experience.  
 
My biggest piece of advice is to remember you’re a student and to ask the question ‘why?’ when speaking to patients and preceptors.  I have received golden nuggets of information from patients from this simple question.  I also ask the preceptors why we have a certain protocol in our hospital and question the logic behind it.  The way things are done are not always the most efficient, so if you can improve a workflow or suggest a new idea, go for it!

Hello! My name is Komal Shah and I am a dietetic intern from region 5. Currently, I am finishing up my intermediate clinical rotation at George Washington University Hospital (GWUH) in Washington, DC – a level one trauma center.  It is fascinating how far I have come in my clinical rotation by pushing my abilities and discovering my strengths.  I can say this because of the best preceptors/dietitians at GWUH who guided me in developing confidence in talking to patients, making right clinical judgement and flourish in the setting.

Just like others, I was terrified going into my clinical rotation. However, the preceptors put me at ease. Being in a big trauma hospital of the region means working with intense and critically ill patients, which requires showing empathy for the family and good team spirt by working with the interdisciplinary team. One of the challenges I came across during my basic clinical rotation was assessing the patients. It is important to have a conversation with your patients and not an interview. However, my focus as soon as I entered the patient’s room at that time was to get all my questions answered from my “checklist” with no follow-up questions or answer the patient’s questions. Once I have received all my answers, I used to get out of the patient’s room without giving any explanation for their nutrition plan of care during the hospital course.

This experience was harming my growth, which my preceptor noticed. She offered to practice the interview session on her before I visit the patient. She also recommended to practice with my friends, family and even myself by looking in the mirror (which helped a lot!). After much practice and feedback, I am now finally able to have a conversation with the patients without any checklist in my hand. This experience helped me gain more morale to talk to not only patients but also the interdisciplinary team.  This training has helped me in providing best care for the patient by making right clinical judgement.

In my clinical rotation so far, I have learned and observed a lot.  At GWUH, a teaching hospital, I was able to observe many procedures and education sessions such as: modified barium swallow test, FEES (fiberoptic endoscopic examination of swallowing), tracheostomy performed at bedside in ICU, G-tube procedure in IR and tube feeding education from home-infusing company -Coram. It was a one-time opportunity to witness these procedures and education sessions. I am very thankful to my preceptor for arranging it.

My preceptors have always forced my abilities to work outside my comfort zone because they believed in my capabilities. They always say, “You know more than you think you do.” This is true! This saying helped me to be bold and give my best shot- which I would recommend all the present/future interns to remember while going into any rotations.
​
The clinical rotation is intense, but having guidance from knowledgeable preceptors and support from your incredible internship director makes it calmer. It is a lesson learning experience every day to prepare you in becoming a registered dietitian. Now, I am confident of my future goal to become a clinical registered dietitian.

​Hi everyone! My name is Kristina Redmond and I am a region 1 intern. I cannot believe I have finished my entire clinical rotation and staff relief. I completed clinical at Holy Family Hospital in Methuen, MA. On day one, everything was so new. New location, new people, new responsibilities. Looking back, I cannot believe how much I learned in just four months. I went from shadowing RDs and writing brief notes to seeing my own patients and completing multiple ADIME notes a day.
 
During clinical, I was able to observe a modified barium swallow test and spent time with the speech language pathologist. It was interesting to see the different technology and tests they use to assess a patient’s ability to swallow. Since I worked closely with the speech language pathologist on a regular basis, it was an awesome experience to spend some time in their shoes! It increased my appreciation for the process needed to decide the safest texture and consistency for a patient.
 
I also participated in daily interdisciplinary rounds. I always knew it was important for all members of the team to work together. During rounds I noticed a tremendous difference in patient care when all members of the team were able to discuss each patient and articulate their care plan, concerns, and gather extra information that may not have been clear in the chart. Everyone in rounds was always welcoming and happy to explain the role they play in patient care. This allowed me to comfortably reach out to any member of the team so I could best help my patient.
 
I was extremely intrigued in critical care during my advanced rotation. The more complicated patients required extreme attention to detail. I was fascinated by the process of deciding on the best enteral/parenteral formulas for different patients. It is not one size fits all! I gained experience calculating appropriate needs for sedated patients on propofol, determining the best formula and rate of tube feed and evaluating the regimen each day. I am excited to be starting my concentration in critical care soon.
 
Overall, clinical is a whirlwind. You learn so much in such a short period of time. Each level of clinical is a new learning experience. Do not forget to breathe! All the RDs have been in your place before and know exactly how it feels to be an intern. It is overwhelming to think about, but everything falls into place. Trust me! 

​Hi Everyone! My name is Kendall Yuhas. I am a region 8 intern based in Lodi, Ohio. I cannot believe I am already more than half way done with the internship. It feels like just yesterday I was in Denver at orientation. So far, I have completed my patient services rotation, clinical nutrition management rotation, and now I just recently concluded my clinical rotation, which were all completed at Summa Akron City Hospital. I am now on my second week of foodservice management at Wooster High School. It has been a huge change going from clinical to foodservice management. Having the skills to be able to easily adapt to new environments has definitely come in handy. After foodservice, I will be completing community hours at the Cleveland Food Bank, Highland Local Schools, and then my remaining community hours will be spent at WIC. I chose weight management as my concentration. My concentration hours will be completed at an outpatient weight management clinic at Fireland’s Regional Hospital in Sandusky Ohio.  Lastly, I will complete my long-term care hours at a nursing home.
 
So far, clinical has been my favorite rotation. I had an amazing learning experience. I worked alongside 10 dietitians at Summa Akron City Hospital. At times it could be frustrating switching preceptors and patient populations so often. However, it was a good experience seeing how each dietitian does things differently. It helped me to create my own style of charting and interviewing/assessing patients. After my first day of clinical, I was very overwhelmed and unsure if clinical was for me. From the beginning of clinical to the time staff relief came around, my confidence level went from a 0 to a 10. By the last two weeks I was functioning independently and efficiently. One of my favorite experiences was when I was with the TPN dietitian and I attended rounds with her and the physicians. I also sat in on PICC line procedures. It was really cool to sit down and have conversations with the TPN doctor. I learned so much and was able to get over my fear/intimidation of speaking with the physicians.
 
My advice to future interns is to not be afraid to step out of your comfort zone. I have found that my best learning experiences have been when I pushed myself to seek out new things. My advice is to not always schedule rotations where you are comfortable. For example, I completed my clinical rotation at Summa Akron City Hospital which is where I have also worked as a diet tech for three years. My original plan was to complete my MNT concentration there as well. I decided that I needed to broaden my horizons and go to a different location and learn something completely new. That is why I decided to change my concentration to weight management. Even though it can be intimidating and nerve-racking to go to new places and work with new people, it will benefit you in the long run. 

​Hello all! My name is Kelsey and I am an intern based out of Colorado Springs, Colorado (region 11). At just over halfway done with my hours, it is difficult to summarize all of the incredible experiences I have had so far!
 
My concentration has been in culinary nutrition, and it has been a wonderful challenge to intersect traditional culinary practices with different dietary and medical nutrition therapy concepts. Throughout the time I spent in Sodexo’s Artisan kitchen at Broadcom Technologies, I was able to work with tools and ingredients I never thought I would have access to.  The staff there was nothing but helpful and had such a wealth of knowledge, they were able to answer any and all questions that came up. From skinning whole salmon, to ‘supreming’ blood oranges, there were new and exciting skills to be learned every single day. Additionally, I was able to help develop recipes, conduct cooking demonstrations, and create educational materials on ways to control blood cholesterol levels by eating foods found in the cafeteria. This has truly grown my ability to merge knowledge from both fields in a way that makes it accessible to individuals from various backgrounds.
 
One of the most exciting parts of the internship has been meeting and learning from so many talented professionals. I often felt like a sponge trying to absorb all the guidance and advice they had to offer! I was incredibly nervous going into my Food Service Management rotation at Memorial Hospital as I had never worked in a managerial position before. However, it was such a team focused environment, I never once felt alone with unanswered questions. Without the help of the entire team, we would not have been able to put on a pasta bar and nutrition education event (on the topic of carbohydrates) that made record setting sales for the hospital! One of the phrases I have always found motivating is “challenge means growth” and nothing has ever exemplified this concept more clearly than this internship.