The practicum project I decided to do was with the outpatient dietitians at my hospital I currently work at. I work with the inpatient dietitians and in the kitchen currently. The outpatient dietitians had applied for a grant from the CDC that is awarded to 10 hospitals in the state and found out that they had gotten it when I was looking for a project to work on. I was then able to get my hours by helping them with their grant. The grant ran from May to the end of August so that is when I decided to do my practicum hours.

A person from the grant came and did a “Healthy Hospital Food and Beverage Environment Scan” of the hospital first. This included the vending machines, cafeteria, coffee shop, environment of the hospital (including physical activity offered) and the outpatient services that were offered. They did a pre-score and a score at the end of August and the goal was to improve the score at the facility level. The grant offered money that they used for the classes and hours for another dietitian to help (I personally did not accept any money).

We were able to work on classes for the classroom setting, cooking demos and grocery store tours. The grants focus was on low sodium and heart health so that is what our classes were focused on. We also added nutrition information to the labeling to products in the coffee shop and the vending machines. This was to add to our score for the hospital environment mainly for visitors and employees. Overall it has been a great experience so far and being out in the community has been wonderful. We had some of the same people coming to each of the cooking classes and going home and making the recipes that same week. Here are a few pictures from what I have been working on.

Kristin Frondal