Design A Mentoring Experience For Medical Nutrition Therapy Dietitian Program

Design a Mentoring Experience for Medical Nutrition Therapy Dietitian Program

Ericka Gibbs (First M. Last)

School or Institution Name (University at Place or Town, State)

Mentoring is a process which not only helps the mentee, the mentor and even the dietetics profession as well. It is a peer to peer relationship in which an experienced person helps a less experienced person to develop skills and grow ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"am7vlf07bj","properties":{"formattedCitation":"{\\rtf (\\uc0\\u8220{}Mentoring,\\uc0\\u8221{} n.d.)}","plainCitation":"(“Mentoring,” n.d.)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1126,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/FGhKhGPG/items/6EK7VVGR"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/FGhKhGPG/items/6EK7VVGR"],"itemData":{"id":1126,"type":"webpage","title":"Mentoring","container-title":"Dietitians of Canada","URL":"https://www.dietitians.ca/Become-a-Dietitian/Mentoring---Preceptoring/Mentoring.aspx"}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (“Mentoring,” n.d.). The mentor and mentee both agree on a specific goal, and the mentor shares his experience with the mentee. It is an important thing in the dietetics profession. Those dietetics who serve as mentors are an important element of professional practice continuity. In addition, it encourages new dietitians to learn from others experiences. It ensures that new dietitians are in place to replace those who are at retirement. It also assists the dietitians with the transition to many areas of specialization.

Medical Nutrition therapy is a medical approach that helps in treating the chronic conditions by an individually tailored nutrition plan. It plays a life-changing role in reducing the complications linked with certain diseases. A dietitian has to counsel the patient during the MNT intervention. The mentoring programs outside the classroom are essential to provide knowledge and practical experience to the students who want to choose dietetics as a profession. These mentoring programs are essential and tune them for the challenges and expectations.

I wanted to choose dietitian as a profession since I was 17. I personally feel there is more need of dietitians than doctors. Diet plays a very important role in maintaining the health of a person. Having a healthy lifestyle is something I always wanted and food and having a good nutritious diet brings good to one's life. For this purpose, I also want to have a dietitian mentorship program for Medical Nutrition Therapy. Moreover, the supervised pre-professional experience is also required to become a professional dietitian. It is probably the last step required to become a professional. First of all, I would like to have the mentor that matches my preferences of the mentor. Studies show that the mentor-mentee matches result in the improvements in the improvements and betterment of the mentorship programs ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"a2pauajpdii","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Hicks-Roof, 2018)","plainCitation":"(Hicks-Roof, 2018)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1128,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/FGhKhGPG/items/AULH6NMP"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/FGhKhGPG/items/AULH6NMP"],"itemData":{"id":1128,"type":"article-journal","title":"Growing the Dietetics Profession via a Mentorship Program Between Dietitians and Dietetics Students","container-title":"Nutrition Today","page":"89-91","volume":"53","issue":"2","author":[{"family":"Hicks-Roof","given":"Kristen K."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2018"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Hicks-Roof, 2018). Results from the study showed that students gained more knowledge and experience and dietitians cultivated leadership skills. In addition, these programs link the students to participating professional providing hands-on experience to them.

I would like to work with a variety of patient care units by and would like the program to enable me to perform different assessments for patients in a wide variety of settings and having different complexities. I want the program to enable me to diagnose different nutritional problems and create different diagnosis statements. In addition, I would like to plan and impellent nutrition interventions and formulate a nutrition prescription. I would also like to develop goals for the patient under the supervision of a mentor and evaluate the nutritional problems in patients. I want the program provides me with an opportunity to provide a culturally competent, patient-focused, age-specific nutritional care to the patients in acute care settings. I would also like to work with the multi-disciplinary teams.

The duration of the program depends on the experience it will provide. I want the mentorship program to be of the time period essential in providing all the skills and benefits. The program must be divided into many MNT rotations, foodservice management, and the community rotations to give a diversified experience. Foodservice management will allow having all the facets of food management including its production, planning, and marketing. Community experience may involve different rotations in the communities providing nutrition experience related to nutrition education, behavior modification strategies and implementation of nutrition material.

I want the program to provide me with the real-life application of nutrition concepts I learned in my course of studies. The program must help me improve my skills including communication skills and it must contribute to my DI application. I want the dietetic program to be competitive and provide the experimental learning experience to make me competitive. In addition, I want my network to get expand and

I want the mentor to have strong communication skills, and he or she must be able to communicate with the mentee. Good listening skills and empathy is also an important characteristic of a mentor that is required to have an effective and result oriented mentorship program. The mentor who has the ability to listen and understand will set goals. I want to set a jointly written goal plan with my mentor and decide the professional activities. I also want to have regular feedback from my mentor regarding my accomplishments and failures. A good mentor must demonstrate the mindset of, innovation, transformation, empowerment, risk-taking, and adaptability. Honesty and diplomacy are also required from a mentor. The mentor must be capable of having a debate and discussing things in a tactful way. A good mentor is also motivated to transfer his knowledge and skills in mentee and is willing to make a significant contribution to his field.

In a nutshell, the mentorship and mentoring programs have become an indispensable element in the natural health care practice. To have dietetics as a profession requires the development of skills and pre-professional experience and therefore an effective mentorship program is required. It encourages new dietitians to learn from others experiences and provided them hands-on skills and knowledge of experienced professionals. I want the mentor to have all the necessary skills and want the positive and contributing outcome of the mentorship program for Medical Nutrition Therapy.

References

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Hicks-Roof, K. K. (2018). Growing the Dietetics Profession via a Mentorship Program Between Dietitians and Dietetics Students. Nutrition Today, 53(2), 89–91.

Mentoring. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.dietitians.ca/Become-a-Dietitian/Mentoring---Preceptoring/Mentoring.aspx