A Day in the Life of a Clinical Dietitian — “RD Day” 2021

For my first “RD Day”, I wanted to dedicate this video to answering a question I’m often asked ➡️➡️ “what does a dietitian do in a hospital setting” and “why would a dietitian need to see a COVID patient?”….so I created this “day in the life” of a clinical dietitian to provide a little personal insight into what my day to day has been looking like. 👨‍⚕️🍎🏥 (doggo included😜)
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So what is a dietitians role in the care of a COVID19 patient?? 🤔
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With COVID19 potentially causing severe respiratory distress, some patients cannot breath and must be placed on a ventilator. When someone is on a ventilator, they can’t eat. An additional challenge for the body is that critical illnesses like COVID19 pneumonia dramatically increase one’s metabolic need, so when someone fighting a critical illness is without nutrition, it is very easy to develop acute malnutrition. This is where clinical dietitians work every day to provide nutrition via feeding tubes. — All patients are different and their medical status can change very quickly. RDs consider the patients: labs, medications, oxygen requirements, weight history, intake history, procedures, etc. when calculating their “nutrition prescription”. Dietitians help to manage and adjust the patient’s tube feed or their “nutrition prescription” as their medical status evolves.
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If a patient is not on a ventilator but requires extremely high amounts of oxygen, eating can be very difficult and the aspiration risk is high. Clinical Dietitians work with the medical team to help these patients meet their nutritional needs through specialized supplements, tube feeding or IV nutrition.
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Of course patient privacy is EXTREMELY important, so this video is only a slight insight into what it actually looks like to work as a clinical RD, but I hope it gives you a different perspective of other roles in acute care!