What a crazy couple weeks it has been! I am happy to say that I have completed my community rotation. I'm a third of the way there...except not really at all because community was only 4 weeks, food service is 6 weeks, and clinical is 22 weeks....so in reality I'm not even close.
The last two weeks of community were great. I spent most of my time at the Healthy Lifestyles Center at Saint Mary Elizabeth Hospital which is a cardiac and pulmonary rehab facility. During my time there I did cooking demos and educational sessions on weight loss motivation. The recipe I made for my cooking demo was a family recipe called Carolina Caviar (recipe below). It was a huge hit. I did the demo on a Friday and the following week I had so many patients come up to me and tell me they made it over the weekend. What a great feeling! I also had a patient who I followed throughout my rotation and counseled her three times a week. This was a great opportunity to practice counseling skills using Motivational Interviewing--a fairly new technique within the last five years. If you are unfamiliar with motivational interviewing it is basically where you get the client to set their own goals rather than telling them what they need to do (but it's much more than this, that's just literally the most basic definition I can give you). My patient that I counseled was so successful with her weight loss and I only met with her for two weeks. She lost 13 pounds! It was very rewarding to know that she did that with my help. At the end of community we have to submit this huge portfolio with everything that we've done and that took so long the last week but it felt SO AMAZING to finally press submit.
Anyway, today I started my food service rotation. I am eager to start but a little nervous since community was so relaxed and this will be very fast-paced. The days are also going to be a lot longer so I need to prepare for that. For example, instead of your normal 9-5 I am going in tomorrow at 6am and leaving at 4pm so I need to get some sleep. I'll update this more often this rotation now that I'm used to the swing of things, I promise! Also, expect a lifestyle post here in a few days :)
Have a great night everyone! xo
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