my first placement is complete

My first placement is complete

Placement has been a whirlwind! The 3 weeks flew by and I’m actually sad it’s over. When you see patients and hear their story you want to know how they turn out and if their condition improves but as we were only there for 3 weeks you don’t get to follow them up. The 3 weeks went so quickly, and I didn’t want to forget anything, so I kept a daily diary to look back on. I wrote about what I observed each day and anything new I found out that I could use in future placements. I think it’s important to take any opportunities you get, for example the other student I was with got to shadow a speech and language therapist for an afternoon and they enjoyed the experience. It’s best to make the most of the time because the next two placements are much more serious as you will have more responsibility.

On placement there a few things extra that we had to do:  go to a care home, see the hospital kitchen, and do a shift with the nurses. At the care home we were left to explore the facility and speak to staff. We got to see the residents being served breakfast and how they cater for people’s different dietary needs which was really interesting. In the kitchen, we spoke to the chefs and got to taste the meals. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the food, I think hospital food as a stigma of not being the nicest, but they got my star of approval! For the nurses shift we had to shadow a nurse for their shift, which meant a 7am start, not fun. But it was great to see what the nurses do and how much they care for patients.

Overall, placement was an amazing experience. It was great to see how valued dietitians are as part of the multidisciplinary team and how patients rely on them for nutritional advice. I got to see lots of different specialities but the areas I really enjoyed were oncology, weight management and critical care. If I’m able to on my next placement, I’ll investigate these areas further.

What I noticed:

Being in the office with the dietitians gave a me proper idea of the job and one thing that surprised me was the amount of computer time. If the dietitian isn’t with a patient they're on the computer, looking at patient information, updating clinical records or writing letters to GPs about referrals. Dietitians have to write and justify everything they do so there is evidence of the patient being cared for properly.

Another thing was that it seemed the dietetic team was a bit stretched, there was about 10 dietitians in team, but they could definitely use more to deal with the patient load. Obviously funding in the NHS is an issue but I didn’t realise the extent of it.

My next placement will be at the end of third year and I look forward to it! I hope you enjoyed my insight into placement and found it useful.

Bye for now! 👋