Careers in Dietetics
Careers in dietetics are in hospitals, universities, correctional facilities, and in mass communications. Often, a career in dietetics means you work in an acute care hospital or a long term care facility buying food, creating diets appropriate for each patient, managing kitchen staff, and assuring government requirements of food preparation are implemented. A dietitian most importantly, is a person who educates people about nutrition and enjoys working with people.
As a registered dietitian (RD), you could specialize in diets for diabetics, for children, for seniors, for pregnant or lactating women, or for athletes. Your area of specialization depends on your own interests. With such consciousness of health and wellness in today's society, you can create your own area of specialization. An RD could easily find a niche specializing in therapeutic diets using herbs for example. Perhaps you are interested in the possibilities of healing diets for cancer patients.
Many dietitians work in outpatient care centers. These dietitians provide specific diets to patients to aid in their recovery.
A dietitian with an emphasis in public health could have an office in a health clinic. This career would involve educating the public about nutrition to improve their quality of life. Diets and nutrition for weight management are important in this field.
Careers in dietetics involve learning about the patient and doing research to provide each patient an appropriate and therapeutic diet. This is true in the area of mental health. Registered dietitians use their nutritional knowledge to provide diets the patients enjoy and will bring each one to optimal health and function. In correctional facilities these therapeutic diets are important as well.
A dietitian may not work only at one location, but travel throughout a certain area. As a dietitian, you might be educating people in retirement communities. You might not only educate, but also provide all dietetic services to these communities such as nutritional consultation, assessment, and dietary goal creation and implementation for the residents of the retirement communities.
Dietetic technicians, registered (DTRs) work under the supervision of registered dietitians and have similar responsibilities. Careers in hospitals and long-term care facilities are common places for DTRs. They plan appealing meals according to the patient's needs, but they would not have as many managerial responsibilities as an RD.
Entrepreneurs can find careers in dietetics in private practice. Your expertise becomes your product, and your knowledge of business makes your practice flourish. You can counsel and educate people in the area of your specialization, and you can let the topics and projects you enjoy open new opportunities in your practice.
Careers in dietetics can involve working for companies that make, package, and distribute food to grocery stores and restaurants. You will assure that the consumer receives quality food that is made and processed in sanitary conditions meeting and surpassing government standards.
People's health depends on the expertise of dietitians to keep them informed of the up-to-date research for optimal health. Communicating nutritional information through the newspaper, on television, radio, and the Internet not only uses your nutritional knowledge, but also your skill in communications.
By providing nutritional food to children from preschool through college, dietitians are practicing their profession. You could find a career as a supervisor that purchases and supplies food to a whole district of elementary schools. You would be responsible for the healthy diets of a whole city's children. On a smaller scale, individual preschools also need dietitians for planning their food and distribution.
After years of experience as registered dietitians, many RDs go on to become professors. Here they continue their careers by educating people in nutrition and their areas of specialization, in college and university classrooms instead of hospitals or private practices.
Whether you find a position in a hospital, a correctional facility or you have your own private practice, your ability to understand each person's mental, physical, and dietary condition are important for providing the appropriate diet. Continual research is necessary to make sure your patients or clients have the best diets. In every field of dietetics, there is research, but you could also focus solely on research to find information and statistics that will help every dietitian do their job more effectively.
A degree in dietetics can be the beginning of a career that continues to present opportunities you never expected.
