n o u r i s h

Dietetic Internship Update – University of Houston Dietetic Internship

25 Jan 2011 Leave a Comment

by Christine Scarcello in Dietetic Internship, Nutrition

So I haven’t written in forever, and it’s because I was so busy back at home working, being lazy, and getting ready for my dietetic internship. I’m currently doing my dietetic internship at the University of Houston in TX for six months. I am so stoked to be here and want to use this blog as a way to keep track of all the great experiences I’ll have while I’m here.

Downtown Houston

First of all, I just moved here a little more than a week ago – January 14th. I can’t believe it’s only been 10 days! It feels much longer. It also doesn’t feel like January! Chicago winters are brutal, and it is 60 degrees and sunny here right now. Such a far cry from the 1 degree weather and ice my mom told me about last week back home. So glad to be missing out on that… but other than weather, I really don’t feel like I’m in Texas… or in a big city, though Houston is the 4th largest in the nation. I guess I haven’t really ventured out much into “Houston” – it’s kind of a sprawled city with no zoning regulations, so it isn’t neighborhood-y like Chicago, and definitely doesn’t follow any kind of “grid” system. From the highways, it seems more like a bunch of big circles, if anything.

I do miss my friends and family, but my living situation at the moment is perfect! I am renting a room in a house with two other interns in my program- a fellow Illinoisian and a woman from Seattle. They are awesome. We rent the rooms from a man who owns the house and his girlfriend who also lives here. AND there is another roommate – a current intern who is finishing up the program and leaving on Saturday.  She completed the previous 6 months of the UH internship, so our programs overlapped by a little bit. She has been a valuable resource on what to expect about this program.

Well the first two weeks of the internship are spent on the UH campus doing internship ”orientation.” Last week we had a group project using the Evidence Analysis Library (though the ADA) and a pathophysiology case study. My case study was on Short Bowel Syndrome (SBS) and we actually will be presenting our slideshow and case study tomorrow. This week we are working on Enteral and Parenteral Nutrition, and we finished our EN case studies this evening and will be given PN case studies tomorrow.

I am excited about the rest of this week! We will be meeting with the current interns to discuss rotation options. The way that UH works is that there are 6 different rotations sections:

Clinical I for 5 weeks – at either a smaller hospital or a county hospital

Clinical II for 5 weeks – at a larger hospital, and preferrably something in the Texas Medical Center (TMC)

Foodservice Management for 4 weeks – at either a hospital or the national headquarters of SYSCO

Wellness for 4 weeks – sports, corporate wellness, counseling, etc

Community for 4 weeks – food banks, school systems, WIC, counseling, outpatient services

Research for 4 weeks – newsletter writing, UNDO research, Look Ahead study on obesity, NASA

We recently found out our first rotation, which will begin on Monday, January 31st. My first rotation is my Wellness rotation, and I will be working with an RD at BP doing corporate wellness! I am beyond excited; not only is this an area of career interest for me, but I will also be working with a fellow intern (the only guy in our program) and it is where our landlord/roommate (the man who owns our house) works as an electrical engineer! It is a great opportunity to work at a major corporation in an area of dietetics that isn’t clinically-based. I am super excited and will report more about this when I start interning there next Monday!!

Have a good week!!