Question and Answer

I got an email last week with some great questions about internships - questions I didn't even think to ask when I was applying, so in case others have similar questions, I've posted part of the email conversation here.


Hi Meg,
I actually just posted on your blog and got so excited that I wanted to contact you personally so to not bore all your blog readers with a super long comment! (Comment: if you're bored, you can skip this post!) I'm very interested in this program and would love to hear what you think of it so far. Most specifically, I was wondering what the structure is, how active/involved the director is, and if you feel like a VA hospital will expose you to a wide range of experiences. Basically, do you like it there and why??

If you get the chance, I'd love to hear back from you. If not (I'm sure the life of an intern is very busy), I'll just keeping reading up on your blog for more information :)

Take care!!
Mona

Hi Mona!
It's good to hear from you!
And I'm glad to know that someone is reading the blog. :)

About your questions...
I have honestly been really impressed with this program and the MVAMC
so far - much more than I thought I would be. I suppose that comment
is biased as hopefully all interns have a good experience and would
promote their program, although I have heard some stories of interns
who feel like they are at the bottom of the totem pole or are
intentionally made to feel like they don't know anything, and that
hasn't been my experience here at all. Quite to the opposite, we have
been warmly welcomed to the nutrition and food service department and
the dietitians even planned a lunch in our honor and have monthly
'lunch with the interns' to get to know us which is a big surprise to
me.

The MVAMC program as far as I can tell is structured around the
expertise of each preceptor. My schedule for the year has 1-3 weeks
with each dietitian plus around 6 weeks of planned community
experiences, which includes WIC, nursing home, vet's home, Extension,
school lunch, lifetime fitness, and 'miscellaneous' which I'm not sure
exactly what is included in that. In addition I have 3 or 4 weeks of
staff relief where I cover for one of the dietitians and 2 weeks of
vacation.

I think our internship director does a good job of making sure we have
enough support but giving us the independence we need to become
competent dietitians. In addition to directing the internship she
also works in research on weight management so we don't see her that
often - maybe once a day. However, when the internship first started,
she spent 2 weeks orienting us to the hospital. Now that we're in
rotations, she emails us once a week with a 'question of the week'
from the ADA exam and schedules our intern classes which are
1-2/month. We attend staff meetings but since I've only been to one
so far, I can't say much about that.

While I can't say that the VA exposes me to a diverse patient
population, we do see a wide range of diseases and all ages except for
children so I would definitely say that we get a wide range of
experiences here. Each dietitian's job is different from the other
dietitians' and our director tries hard to plan external experiences
to make up for anything we don't experience in-house. For example,
she sent us to a cultural competence in dietetics workshop hosted by
the Twin Cities District Dietetic Association, we're having a day-long
pediatrics workshop with the Fairview interns, and she sent us to the
International Diabetes Center for more in-depth training on treating
diabetes.

Whether the details I have given you are unique to the MVAMC
internship I don't really know as I haven't talked much with interns
from other programs except for the Fairview interns who have been at
all the external events we have gone to.

You asked if I like this program - I seriously love the VA and it's
not because of the program itself, but because of the people who work
here. The rate of turn-over among the employees at our hospital is
incredibly low because it's really a great place to work. Most of the
people in our department have been with the VA 15+ years - even many
of the food service workers, which I think says a lot. At least 4,
maybe more, of our dietitians did their internships at the MVAMC and
stayed on or came back. In addition to the employees, our patients
are great too. Because the VA is a teaching hospital, they're used to
students coming in and out of their rooms and in my experience always
try to be accommodating and pleasant, even when they don't feel the
greatest. One patient even apologized to me after being a bit crabby
with my preceptor the day before.

So for what it's worth, there's my opinion about the MVAMC.

Keep me posted on where you end up going.

:)
Meg

Undergrad Years - Do More than Study

From my observation most people who choose dietetics as a career have a passion for food, wellness, exercise or maybe even hospitals that pre-disposed them to becoming an RD. That's great because it leads them to naturally seek out jobs, volunteer opportunities or organizations related to those passions. If you are an undergrad student and haven't done that yet, do so post haste. There's a section on the internship application that asks for nutrition-related experiences and you want to have something interesting to put there. A really dedicated advisor will make sure you're doing this and may even fill your inbox with information about possible summer internships and other opportunities.

Rather than wait for your advisor to do the work for you, here's a short list of some of activities to pursue taken from the diverse undergrad experiences of myself and all the dietetics students I know:
- internships at a bakery and food coop
- working for WIC
- EMT/Paramedic
- student dining service on campus
- hospital or nursing home food service
- hospital volunteer
- working in a research laboratory on campus or at a hospital
- working for Extension and 4-H
- volunteering at a soup kitchen or food bank
- summer program teaching nutrition to mothers in Peru
- involvement in the American Dietetic Association and Student Dietetic Association
- became a certified personal trainer
- TA for a nutrition or food science class

So the moral of the story is that for the 3 (or more!) years before applying for internships, dietetics students do a lot more things related to nutrition than just study chemistry, food composition and nutrient tables.

What's this all about?

Any dietetics student can attest that the fall of their senior year of college was complicated by a the time-consuming, stressful process of applying for dietetic internships. When I was applying for internships, one of my advisors recommended that I blog the process so that future students could avoid some of the frustration. This isn't by any means a comprehensive guide to getting an internship. It's just my experience, and I hope that other RDs or interns will add their comments or links to their own blogs to expand the pool of wisdom so to speak.