New Letters, New Job
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
I posted a little while back about passing my RD exam and being now officially a dietitian. This week I added another set of letters behind my name. I am now Alicia McCain, RD LD! LD stands for Licensed Dietitian, which basically means that I payed a lot of money to the state of Iowa so that they could give me a slip of paper which allows me to practice as a dietitian.
The reason I added the new letters to the end of my name is because I started a new job on Monday. I'm still working part-time in clinical research, but I'm now also spending half my week working as a clinical dietitian at the University of Iowa Hospital. They are a little short right now, plus there is an RD who is about to give birth anytime now and be out on maternity leave. So they needed some part-time help.
It'll be really good experience for me, and refresh my memory of all that stuff I learned while in the internship. I'll be covering the cardiac floor, plus the IPCU (for people with respiratory/pulmonary issues), and people who have esophagectomies (a surgery where they take out your esophagus completely and either pull up your stomach to make a new one or take out part of your colon to make a new one- not pleasant!). I am training right now, so today I wrote my first note as an official dietitian! It was kind of weird to go see the patient and then write up the note and sign it official without having anyone check my work. I'm fully responsible now- which is exciting and scary all at once.
5 comments:
congrats friend ! you sound so "official" now! :)
Esophagectomies sound totally not-awesome.
-A
Thanks for your comment on our blog! I'd love to meet you sometime when we're visiting the Cramers in IC...I work in clinical research as well at the University of Minnesota. Specifically I work in the Cancer Center's clinical trials office and work mostly on blood and marrow transplant trials for hematologic cancers. What type of research do you do? Josh and Dana have said very good things about your coffee and gelato...we'll have to come down for a visit and try it out soon!
Maren- That's cool that you work in clinical research too! I work as a study coordinator for a project with bariatric surgery patients. We are looking at using a new, very hi-tech activity monitor (called IDEEA) as a screening tool to determine if someone is a good candidate for surgery or not. Right now we rely on self-reports of physical activity and diet, which in obese populations especially are unreliable. We're hoping we can use this device to get a more objective measure of energy intake and useage. I just started working the research job this summer and I love it. Research is definitely my thing. And for sure look us up next time you come visit IC- I'd love to meet you!
Cool, thanks for sharing! Yes, clinical research is a fascinating thing; I've learned so much since beginning to work at the university last year.
You guys will be on our list of places to visit when we go to IC next, for sure!! We'll have a babe by then, too, but no gelato or coffee for her for a while. :)
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