Emily recently completed her Journal Club experience. Just as a quick reminder, each intern is required to complete a Journal Club presentation to graduate from the BHS Dietetic Internship. This experience includes choosing an article, presenting the article, and leading a discussion of the article content with the group. Emily chose the following article, “Effect of Aging on A1C Levels in Individuals Without Diabetes” from Diabetes Care October 2008. Emily did an excellent job in her Journal Club presentation. She received the following comments from the evaluators of her presentation; “Good job Emily. You looked comfortable and you understood what you were talking about a great deal” and “Great job explaining the article and research”. Way to go Emily!

Emily recently completed her Management/Leadership rotation within the Food and Nutrition Services Department at St. Luke's Baptist Hospital. Each intern is required to complete a multitude of projects, which includes a theme meal and catering event. Emily's catering event was for a Perioperative Nurse's Week reception. The event included hors d'ouevres and beverages. Emily was responsible for all aspects of the execution of this event. Emily felt the event went well but did learn a lot from the experience. Her guests were please with the food and the decor of the room. She received the following comments; "Everything looks beautiful", "The food is delicious", and "Great job with everything and the food". 


Emily chose a Thai theme meal after a brainstorming session with the leadership of the Food and Nutrition Department. The theme meal was presented at the action station, or "Chef's Corner" of the St. Luke's cafeteria. Emily completed the marketing for the event titled "Escape to Thailand". Her menu included Spicy Thai Basil Chicken Fried Rice, Pad Thai Noodles, Tom Yum Goong sour and spicy shrimp soup and Chick Satay Skewers with spicy peanut dipping sauce. The feedback that Emily received was all positive. People told Emily that the smell of the food had extended out of the cafteria into the hallway, and the smell drew them in toward the Chef's Corner.  Excellent work Emily!

It is amazing how fast the time has flown by this year! We have come to the point in the curriculum where we have the first case study presentations by the interns. Each intern is required to present two case studies during the year.  Half of the class presents their chosen case study at a time. Emily, Maria, Tracey, and Kevin completed their presentations just before the holiday break.  Each intern is required to choose a case study patient/topic. We had four great presentations on a wide variety of topics: 1). Emily presented on “Treatment of Intractable Seizures using the Ketogenic Diet” 2). Maria presented on “Post Bariatric” 3). Tracey presented on “COPD” and 4).  Kevin presented on “Rhabdomyolysis”. Each intern received positive comments from the evaluators. GREAT JOB Emily, Maria, Tracey, and Kevin!












"THANK GOODNESS ITS OVER!!!!!"

Roxanne has recently completed her one-week rotation at the Child Nutrition Program at Judson Independent School District (JISD) . At JISD, the interns work under the tutelage of Sharon Glosson MS, RD, LD Director of the Child Nutrition Program.

For the Baptist Health System Dietetic Internship , each intern must develop, plan, and execute a nutrition education class to a target audience. Roxanne’s target group was 60 first graders. Roxanne decided to teach the group about breakfast foods and why it's important to eat breakfast every day. She also wanted the group to be able to distinguish healthy breakfast foods from less healthy ones.

During the class, Roxanne provided visuals of good breakfast choices, such as fruit, milk, toast, and eggs. She taped these pictures up in front of the group so that they could see the foods the entire time she was talking. At the end, she also introduced some less healthy choices such as donuts and soda and explained why these were not the best foods to eat. She also allowed a few of the students to share what they eat for breakfast.

In order to test what Roxanne had presented to the group, she created a relay race. A child from each team ran forward and had to select a good breakfast food from a whole table of pictures. Roxanne used the same pictures that she had used during the presentation so the kids would recognize the image. She also included unhealthy items so that there was a bit of a challenge.

The kids did a great job and in the end, all of them were able to make the right choices. Roxanne also chose this activity because it allowed the kids to run and get exercise while learning about good nutrition. Great job Roxanne!

Each of the interns of the Baptist Health System Dietetic Internship have the pleasure of participating in a community service project to a local church. The project entails providing nutrition education to an elderly group. Half of the intern class recently presented "Nutrition in the Golden Years" and the other half of the intern class will present in 2009. The presentation "Nutrition in the Golden Years" covered the following topics:  1).  Overcoming obstacles that may hinder proper nutrition 2).  What foods have key nutrients essential for successful aging 3).  Healthy meal planning and 4).  How to each on a budget. The interns are required to actively participate in the development and planning through the execution of the presentation. After completion of the presentation, each intern is required to complete a self-reflection on the experience. In reading the self-reflections, the interns felt that they worked well together as a team and were compassionate about the subject matter. Great job Emily, Maria, & Kevin!

 

The Dietetic Internship at the Baptist Health System also has a didactic class component in addition to the supervised practice piece. During one of the recent didactic classes, the interns toured the San Antonio Food Bank. The San Antonio Food Bank was named the 2007-2008 Food Bank of the Year by America's Second Harvest. In FY 2005, the San Antonio Food Bank received more than 27 million pounds of food, produce, and grocery products. These products are distributed to 380 human service agencies that help southwest Texans in 16 counties. By partnering with San Antonio food Bank, these agencies save more than $40.5 million in food purchase costs. These values represent almost 1.8 million meals per month going to 40,000 poor and hungry families in the San Antonio area. In the coming years, additional partner agencies will be eligible to receive San Antonio Food Bank products.

During the visit, the interns toured the San Antonio Food Bank's garden. The food bank grows all organic vegetables and herbs for use in their kitchen and focus on working with what grows best in Texas soil and weather. This food is used when they prepare meals for school children and teach cooking classes. The goal is to become more self-sustainable. In this photo, the San Antonio Food Bank gardener is explaining all of this to the interns. One intern stated "It was amazing to see the wide range of plants they produce".

Approximately every 4 months, the Baptist Health System leaders come together to participate in a Leadership Development Institute (LDI). This is an opportunity for leadership development and learning on such topics as employee engagement, staff recruitment/retention, and quality. The LDI experience is two consecutive days. The interns participate in planning and executing the catering needs for those two days (breakfast, lunch, and two snacks). The experience is rewarding, but exhausting. The interns received high kudos on their performance! Way to go! 

Maria, Roxanne, Christina (Registered Dietitian, NCB), Emily, Debbie (Sysco SA), Ivan (Caterer, NCB), and David (Director Food and Nutrition, NCB)

Janae also recently completed her School Food Service/Child Nutrition Program rotation at Judson Independent School District as a requirement of the Dietetic Internship at the Baptist Health System in San Antonio, Texas. Janae's target audience was a 2nd grade class. She discussed the drawbacks of drinking High Energy Drinks such as: not suitable as a fluid replacement, reports of deaths from caffeine toxicity, high blood pressure, tachycardia, headaches, and other side effects. Janae compared and contrasted the caffeine levels of different beverages to the High Energy Drinks. She also encouraged the students to drink milk, water, Gatorade, or juice (100% juice) in place of the High Energy beverages. Janae stated, "I was surprised at how many children raised their hands when I asked if they drank energy drinks". Great Job Janae!

As a requirement for the Dietetic Internship at the Baptist Health System, each intern is required to execute an educational class during their School Food Service/Child Nutrition Program rotation. The intern completes this rotation at the Judson Independent School District. Amanda presented a creative lesson on the heart. She first presented and handed out a picture of the heart and discussed how the blood follows through the heart. Then she went over the information again using a question and answer format. She also put key terms on the back of each heart, so that everyone had a chance to give an answer even if they did not like speaking in front of an audience. "Most kids could answer almost every question," remarked Amanda. She also discussed the benefits of exercise and eating fruits and vegetables. At the end, Amanda had a question & answer period. She said that the kids wanted to know if eating out was healthy and if Subway was healthy. The kids, trying to be sneaky, also asked some questions they already knew the answer to, but Amanda picked up on that. Good job Amanda!

­­­­­­­­­­As a requirement of the curriculum for the Dietetic Internship at the Baptist Health System in San Antonio, Texas, each intern is expected to present a Journal Club article. What does this entail?  The interns must first select an article from a referred journal. The article can be on almost any topic of interest to the intern. Approval of their current Preceptor and the Dietetic Internship Director must also be obtained. Then the intern presents their article (following a required format) to the group of invited participants (System Dietitians, Community Preceptors, and other interns).  Maria completed her Journal Club in October. Her article was titled:  “The Food Insecurity—Obesity Paradox: A Review of the Literature and the Role of Food Stamps May Play” from the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. Maria did a great job in presenting this article as well as leading the group in a question/answer period. This assignment is a pass/fail assignment and each intern is evaluated by all of the participants utilizing a grading rubric. The grading rubrics are transparent so that each interns is aware of how they will be evaluated.