Dietetics expands beyond the waistline
Janel Shoun-Smith |
Dietetics is a rapidly growing and changing field, and Lipscomb University’s Department of Nutrition and Kinesiology is working hard to make sure every graduate can not only keep up with the changes, but excel and thrive in the health care industry. March is National Nutrition Month, and it’s the perfect time to take a new look at the university’s nutrition undergraduate and graduate programs.
Dietetics expands beyond the waistline
Today’s dietitians do so much more than promote weight loss. They are the patient’s partner in recovering from illness, preventing long-term medical conditions or enhancing athletic performance.
Twenty years ago, a dietitian would have been found typically at a patient’s hospital bedside, working to help them recover from an illness. Today, dietitians can be found on the National Football League fields, in special health care clinics to deal with diabetes or heart health, in the offices of the nation’s largest health insurers and in integrative medical practices along with yoga instructors and acupuncturists.
As obesity has become a national issue and food allergies are skyrocketing, the field of dietetics is becoming more recognized in the public eye and has expanded to areas of health care where it was not previously present, said Autumn Marshall, chair of the Department of Nutrition and Kinesiology, which includes both graduate and undergraduate programs.
Hospitals have established special education centers for outpatient and wellness care; health coaches for employees is a growing trend among the nation’s insurers; interdisciplinary medical teams include dietitians who watch for evidence of malnutrition and other nutrition- related complications; and athletes can hire private practice dietitians to improve their performance.
“Now you often see registered dietitians being interviewed on the news as nutrition experts, which you rarely saw 10 years ago,” said Anne Lowery, assistant professor of dietetics and director of the Dietetic Internship Program.
And that is what makes Lipscomb’s nutrition programs more important than ever before to aspiring health care professionals. The university began offering eight spots in its Dietetic Internship Program 12 years ago, and today Lipscomb receives more than 100 applications each year for the 12 openings it has today.
So in a year when Lipscomb’s nutrition programs are going through the re-accreditation process, its leaders are working hard to make every aspect of the program as applicable to today’s dietetic work environment as possible.
The undergraduate program now incorporates ServSafe certification standards—food protection and management standards developed by the National Restaurant Association—into its course work to help food systems management graduates be more competitive, said Lowery.
And for those looking to go into dietetics, the undergraduate program has established an admissions policy with stronger academic requirements before entering the program, thus ensuring that students are more competitive and successful in obtaining their internship appointments, said Nancy Hunt, associate professor of nutrition and director of the undergraduate dietetics program.
The dietetic internship program has implemented new approaches to preparing graduates for the registration examination which has resulted in a 100 percent pass rate for the last cohort, said Lowery. The internship program is continuing to provide interns with experiences in medical nutrition therapy and is also focusing on providing more experiences in sports nutrition and collaborative health care environments in the future.
“By increasing the available internship opportunities by 50 percent and securing a broader representation of practice experiences, the Dietetic Internship Program is committed to preparing interns for the increasing demands of the marketplace,” said Dr. Roger Davis, dean of the college.
Lipscomb alumni are sharpening the cutting-edge of nutrition science
Jerry Painter, 55, a Nashville native who completed his required supervised practice through Lipscomb’s dietetic internship three years ago, knows firsthand the importance of the nutrition program keeping up-to-date with the fast-moving health care field. He had his own personal training company before deciding to pursue a career as a dietitian. Trainers are finding more and more that clients are asking for nutrition advice as well as fitness advice, and Painter wanted to make sure the information he was giving clients was correct.
“You can’t have a good exercise program without nutrition and you can’t have a good nutrition program without exercise,” said Painter.
Because of professionals like Painter, Lipscomb created a Master of Science in Exercise and Nutrition Science in 2009, designed to prepare a more holistic wellness professional.
“The program has students working as health coaches, in corporate wellness, in eating disorder clinics, with physical therapists, in weight rooms with athletes or teaching, and they all need knowledge in areas of fitness and nutrition to effectively meet the needs of their clients,” said Karen Robichaud, director of the exercise and nutrition science graduate program. “Our high placement rate—100 percent this past year—shows that there is a demand out there for these dual professionals.”
Painter uses both his fitness and nutrition expertise as the clinical manager for Onlife Health, a subsidiary of Blue Cross Blue Shield that offers health coaching to employees of the insurer’s clients. Painter trains the health coaches in the areas of physical activity, weight management and nutrition, stress management, tobacco cessation, blood pressure, cholesterol and preventative health. Health coaches then work with patients all over the nation providing health information, behavior modification techniques and motivation over the phone.
Many of the country’s insurers are diving into health coaching for their clients, Painter said, and
that’s just one area where fitness and nutrition align in today’s health care environment. Integrative medicine, practitioners offering various health areas, including nutrition and fitness, in one office,is another delivery model on the rise, said Virginia Turner, clinical nutrition manager at the University of Tennessee Medical Center and a former president of the Tennessee Academy of Dietetics.
The wellness concept is growing more popular, Turner said, and the dietitian is very much a part of the holistic approach to health. “People know they have got to make lifestyle changes, often driven by their rising insurance premiums.”
Marietta Parrish, a 2000 undergraduate nutrition program graduate, was so much on the cutting
edge, she wasn’t even able to find full-time work in her field of sports nutrition until seven years ago. Now she is the team nutritionist for Tennessee’s professional sports teams, including the Nashville Predators. Through her private practice, Healthlete, she counsels major league athletes on how to change their nutrition and eating habits to optimize performance and recovery goals.
When Parrish attended Lipscomb, there was no master’s in exercise and nutrition, so she created her own hybrid opportunities. But by 2011, Lipscomb alumna Rachel Stratton was able to get a job as a sports dietitian at the University of Oregon straight out of the Dietetic Internship Program. It was one of only 25 such jobs in the nation at that time.
Then two years ago, the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement required each team to have an affiliation with a consulting or staff dietitian, Parrish said.
That one event greatly enhanced opportunities for graduates looking to go into the sports field. “Our goal is to create an additional focus for the internship to include sports nutrition in order to help fulfill the growing need for certified sports R.D.s,” said Lowery. “A collaboration between Lipscomb’s athletics department and the internship program has been discussed, and plans are being formed.”
Dietitians have also become crucial members of the medical teams at hospitals, Turner said. Today dietitians in hospitals can do nasal gastric tube placement or assess patients for signs of wasting or malnutrition. A diagnosis of malnutrition can be important for hospitals as such patients fall into a category that receives more financial reimbursement, Turner said.
One way Lipscomb dietitians are trained to participate more fully on collaborative medical teams, is through the College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences’ grand rounds program, in which students from each health discipline meet once a month, form interdisciplinary teams and collaborate to address a mock health care situation.
“Medical nutrition therapy has finally been recognized as in integral part of improving patient outcomes and reimbursement for hospitals,” said Lowery. “While it will remain a significant part of the dietetic internship, and training will continue in this area for all dietetic interns in our program, we look forward to exploring new areas of dietetics in order to graduate future nutrition leaders for growing markets.”