It was 9 weeks ago but I remember it like it was
yesterday. My hands were shaking and a glistening sheen of perspiration had
appeared on my forehead. I was unable to create any coherent thoughts; I was
about to give my first nutrition education to a patient. My first nutrition
education was a weight loss education for a 500lb patient. I left this man’s
room questioning the effectiveness of my education. Now that I am nearing the
end of this clinical rotation, I like to think I’ve become more proficient in
delivering nutrition education to patients. Here are a few things I’ve learned
to help me in educating patients.
Meet People Where They Are
To put it simply, “meet people where they are”
means inferring and understanding how likely they are to make dietary changes
in their life. Most of the patients I educated did not seem interested in
altering their diets. To meet them where they were, I usually tried and find
one easy change they could make to their diet and have them focus their efforts
there. In the case of the 500lb man, meeting him where he was involved
understanding the difficulties that come with weight loss, his age, and his
motivation to actually lose weight. This was a middle aged man who had been carrying
extra weight his whole life and he had expressed several times his interest in
an outpatient weight loss clinic. To meet this patient where he is, we decided
that switching from regular soda to diet soda would be the easiest change to
make that would promote weight loss.
Handouts
Handouts can be a very useful tool when
providing nutrition education. Some patients are in pain, half conscious, or
uninterested in changing their diet, so they may not hear or retain dietary
guidance when it is provided; this is where handouts come into play. Many
professional organizations offer online nutrition education handouts. I prefer
using handouts from the Nutrition Care Manual (NCM). The NCM is a product of
the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and contains a section on client
education with general information about nutrition and varying disease states.
Each handout features the relation between nutrition and the disease, foods
allowed and foods to avoid, and a sample 1-day menu that follows the prescribed
diet, all formatted in a professional manner. The handouts are a great resource
for dietetic interns or new dietitians, too, as they can be a prompt for
important points to cover with patients.
A
sneak peek at the NCM diet education page
Practice, Practice, Practice
As the old cliché goes, practice makes perfect.
In my opinion, nothing prepares you for delivering nutrition educations more
than practice. At my clinical site, we would receive a fair number of nutrition
education consults which allowed for plenty of practice. On days where my
floors lacked education consults, I would ask the dietitians on the other
floors to send me any education consults they received. Being able to practice
has helped me find a balance between simplifying the educations while giving
enough detail to highlight what is most important nutritionally for each
patient.
Although I am not yet an expert educator, I have
learned a lot about providing sound, actionable nutrition education to
patients. I plan to use these three approaches to continue to hone my
counselling skills.
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