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Internships for U of I's master's degree in dietetics teach food and nutrition management, clinical dietetics and community nutrition

In addition to preparing food and planning meals, Taylor Begin screened hospital patients, diagnosed nutrition-related ailments and suggested health interventions as an intern with Gritman Medical Center in Moscow.

In May, Begin, of La Grande, Oregon, will be among eight graduates receiving a master’s degree in dietetics through 麻豆视频入口在线观看’s Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences. Students in the two-year program must complete 1,000 hours of supervised experiential learning in the dietetics industry.

The school awarded its first master’s degrees in dietetics in 2023. Though U of I had offered a bachelor’s in dietetics since 1978, it switched to a graduate program once the industry chose to make having a master’s a minimum requirement for entry-level jobs.

The master’s program encompasses eight-week internships in both food and nutrition management and clinical dietetics, as well as a six-week internship in community nutrition. Begin was assigned to Gritman for both of her eight-week internships. She took advantage of a three-plus-two program option allowing her to graduate with a master’s degree after five years in school.

“It’s a lot different than when you are in school, because in school you talk about a lot of these procedures you might do in theory,” Begin said. “Rather than reading out of a textbook, you’re actually applying it yourself.”

Begin’s food and nutrition management internship at Gritman covered the usual aspects of working in and running a commercial cafeteria. But it also emphasized serving medically tailored meals and following recipes precisely, giving patients surety that their food choices meet their dietary restrictions. The Gritman cafeteria has specialized software to analyze every ingredient in a patient’s order, ensuring their meals comply with dietary restrictions and nutritional requirements.

Students in the food and nutrition management internship must plan and implement a themed meal, complete a performance improvement project designed to help their facility function better and conduct employee training.

Begin planned the menu, ordered the food and even made decorations for a fairy tale-themed meal at Gritman. Storybooks were placed on each table, and special menu items, such as hazelnut soup from Disney’s “Tangled,” were served. Her performance improvement project entailed developing an audit for evaluating cafeteria employees annually about their knowledge of standards intended to protect at-risk patients from food-related choking hazards. Her training involved running employees through the audit. Begin knew little about audits when she started the task.

“For me, the benefit was mostly knowing even though I didn’t 100% already know how to do this type of task, that I could do my own research and was able to make a final product that was, in my opinion, pretty useful, and they could keep using it in the future,” Begin said.

For the clinical dietetics internship, Begin met with patients and screened them for risk factors associated with malnutrition, asking them about their diet, changes in body composition and other details of their well-being. Based on what she discovered, she would often make recommendations, such as referring her clients to outpatient nutrition counseling.

U of I’s director of dietetics, Hydee Becker, partners with local school districts and clinical kitchens ranging in size from critical access hospitals such as Gritman to larger facilities such as St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center to host eight-week internships. Community nutrition internships are centered around educating the public about nutrition and improving community health, working in collaboration with partners such as Dairy West and the UI Extension program Eat Smart Idaho. Begin did her community nutrition internship with Vandal Health Education.

“Our program has different affiliation agreements with different facilities, and we place students for those experiences,” said Hydee Becker, a clinical associate professor and director of dietetics. “We work with students to match them as closely as possible based on future career goals.”

Graduates in dietetics are in high demand. Becker checks in on her former students about a year after graduation and consistently finds they’re all employed in careers such as food service managers, Extension educators, public health nutritionists, clinical dietitians, nutrition counselors and performance nutritionists. Salaries range from $59,000 for entry-level workers to $153,000 for senior-level workers.