After I spent the week in pediatrics, as I mentioned in my last recap – I spent the next 2 weeks in Patient Services.
Patient Services is a management/foodservice type of rotation and is a very unique position for a RD to be in. Patient services mainly deals with the foodservice side of a patient’s stay in the hospital. Patient services deals with patient problems with their food – whether it be missing items, complaints, preference issues, etc. We had daily meetings where we met with the patient services management team, our trayline management team and our patient ambassador team. In these meetings, any issues that arise with the roughly 1200 beds we serve daily were addressed and dealt with.
The RD is responsible for dealing with dietary issues – whether it be a diet order problem, a question of availability with a diet, or a food preference issue that is dealt with by our diet techs. The trayline management team handles any problems with incorrect orders or foodservice problems that can be managed when the food is actually placed on the tray. The patient ambassadors round on about 60 patients each per day, handling patient complaints and working constantly to keep our patients happy with the food provided.
Organizationally there is generally an ADPS – or Assistant Director of Patient Services in a hospital, which is a position required to be filled by a RD. At our hospital, our most recent ADPS left and was replaced with a general patient services director, who is not a RD. However, we have a patient services manager who IS a RD – and is who I spent the majority of these two weeks working with. The fact that we have a larger organizational structure allows our hospital to work around this requirement.
Why is this necessary to be a RD position? Like I mentioned, patient services is really the branch between the clinical work done on a patient’s diet and the delivery of the food from the kitchen. Some patients in our hospital are on selective menus – where they can order what they want from a menu, while others are on a stock hospital menu. These food preferences have to align with their diet order, which takes a RD with clinical experience to help manage this process and ensure the kitchen is providing the correct items.
Truthfully, this is a rotation that would have been more beneficial for me in the beginning of the year because I learned so much about how a patient’s diet and menu choices are managed in the kitchen. I learned about how I could help patients solve their food problems, or help them to find items on the menu that would benefit their nutrition status or help them when they were having menu fatigue. I finally understood the entire process of what we can manipulate as clinical RDs to help our patients.
Regardless of the timing, I learned a great deal in this rotation. We worked in the trayline manager position for two different meal shifts – checking trays for accuracy and dealing with patient issues. We completed test trays and worked to improve tray accuracy and temperature requirements. We rounded on patients to learn how we can improve our foodservice operation and then communicated these findings to management in team meetings.
We also did a fair amount of general management. Our patient services manager is responsible for our diet techs, record clerks, diet clerks and patient ambassadors. We participated in performing audits for her team and employee roundings. We worked on management projects to improve work productivity. We wrote a letter to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services petitioning them to pass a national law allowing dietitians to order diets and supplements for patients on their own, without requiring doctor approval (which is something we have at Baylor, but many hospitals do not). We worked on floor stock for our units and re-organized nutrition rooms on the units. We even delivered food trays one day to patients!
Over the two week period, we were VERY busy with all the assorted tasks I mentioned above. Basically – if it had to do with the patients meals or managing the staff that takes care of patient meals, we worked there!
In general – this is a very different foodservice area compared to all our other rotations. Mainly the difference lies in a RD being required in this role. However, it was a very interesting 2 weeks and I learned SO much about foodservice and how it works with my work on the floor as a clinical RD.
Any questions about Patient Services?
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