My name is Leighza Baasch and I am currently in my clinical rotation at St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood, CO. As I work through the clinical rotation and interact with other members of the care team, something has stood out to me-and that is compassion and respect. Every member of the care team from nurses to doctors to OT/PT/SLP to palliative care all the way down to the support staff behind the scenes like housekeepers, food service, and transports are working to care for the patients and family that are at the hospital. Dietitians are no different - they strive alongside the rest of the care team to treat the patient to the fullest extent possible while maintaining compassion and respect for the patient and what the patient is going through. Even though dietitians can be overlooked in the context of patient care from the view of patients and family, they provide care unlike none other. It is well documented that healing is severely hindered if nutrition is not sufficiently present. Dietitians provide nutrition across the entire spectrum from educations and recommendations about diets to the other end of the spectrum by advising about nutrition support via tube feeding or parenteral nutrition. The struggle that everyone, including RDNs, face is that there are some cases where the patient ultimately can’t be helped no matter how long or hard the care team works. I have been present with the care team when the patient or family has had to make the hardest decision imaginable to discontinue care. Words cannot describe the sadness and sense of loss when that situation occurs, and is also accompanied by a feeling of failure that stems from knowing that while you as the dietitian did everything possible to help the patient, ultimately it was not successful. Those can be hard days, days that make you question why you get out of bed every day. But then there are days that you walk out of a patient room and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you made a difference in the life of that patient. Being a dietitian is about balance-knowing that there will be both good and bad days. No matter what the outcome, you can be confident that you did everything possible to provide nutrition support and advice with compassionate and respectful care to the fullest extent possible.
