Hello, everyone! I am a Sodexo distance intern located in the Carolinas. I have already completed my food service management and concentration rotations at GSK (a pharmaceutical company) in Raleigh, NC. I relocated to Charleston, SC for my clinical rotation at Trident and Summerville Hospitals, where I am currently in my 6th week.
I was sooo nervous to start clinical because I was moving, and I’ve always heard clinical is super difficult! I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but it’s definitely doable and I’m actually kind of enjoying it! Being in Charleston is awesome because everyone wants to come visit me, and I enjoy exploring the city every weekend. As for the actual clinical rotation, I feel like I’m definitely catching on! I had to adjust to constantly receiving constructive criticism, but my preceptors tell me they can tell that I’m catching on pretty quickly. I enjoy digging through patient notes and seeing what’s wrong with them and how I could possibly be a part of the reason they heal. I had worked in the food service side of hospitals before and just assumed everyone had a pretty similar reason and story for why they were in the hospital, but I was so wrong! Everyone has a different story and it’s up to us to figure out how to heal through food!
I was sooo nervous to start clinical because I was moving, and I’ve always heard clinical is super difficult! I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but it’s definitely doable and I’m actually kind of enjoying it! Being in Charleston is awesome because everyone wants to come visit me, and I enjoy exploring the city every weekend. As for the actual clinical rotation, I feel like I’m definitely catching on! I had to adjust to constantly receiving constructive criticism, but my preceptors tell me they can tell that I’m catching on pretty quickly. I enjoy digging through patient notes and seeing what’s wrong with them and how I could possibly be a part of the reason they heal. I had worked in the food service side of hospitals before and just assumed everyone had a pretty similar reason and story for why they were in the hospital, but I was so wrong! Everyone has a different story and it’s up to us to figure out how to heal through food!
One way we do this is through the food we serve in the hospital. As a Sodexo dietitian, you are very connected to the food service side of the hospital, which makes sense because you want your patient to enjoy the food so they eat and heal. We often work with the kitchen to solve food service problems for the patients. One problem across hospitals around the world that ties speech therapists, food service, and RDs together is inconsistency in texture modified diets. To overcome this, the International Dysphagia Diet Standardization Initiative (IDDSI) was created. IDDSI is a global effort to standardize dysphagia diets for all patients. The Sodexo test kitchen is at the forefront of creating recipes for this diet for their hospitals to use. Our hospital was selected as a test site for the new IDDSI recipes. This means a chef from the Sodexo Culinary Solutions team came to our hospital to personally teach the cooks, food service workers, RDs, and speech pathologists the changes to the texture modified diets. The speech therapist was very pleased with the improvements and feels the new recipes are safer for the patients that need them.
Throughout the following week, I ordered test trays of the IDDSI recipes to examine accuracy. The “minced and moist” meals cannot have pieces larger than the space between fork prongs. The meat must be thoroughly mixed with gravy, and it must be easily smashed with a fork. The process has been exciting! I have enjoyed working with the different departments for a common goal of improved health for the patients.
