During the “research phase” of deciding whether or not I should enter the field of nutrition, I solicited the advice of several RDs to get their perspective on the matter. This is what one friend had to say:
There is so much to say about the field of dietetics, but I can give you a little glimpse of what it’s like to be an RD. There are pretty much 3 different directions you can pursue: 1) administration, 2) community, 3) clinical.
Administration allows for more career growth, and obviously more money in the long run if you want to advance far in a hospital or school setting. This includes management, budgeting, policy writing, etc etc. At the entry level, administrative dietitians will provide menu planning in a hospital setting, working with vendors, obtaining patient satisfactions, and some management for kitchen staff. This requires almost no patient encounters and interactions.
Community nutrition settings include schools, clinics, and public health clinics.. This may include fighting in the government policy level, program implementation for communities, policy writing, and grant writing. You will be able to affect change in a larger scale if you like. Usually, dietitians who are in outpatient education are included in this category. They work in hospital or clinic and work with patients 1:1 or conduct classes to educate them on disease-specific nutrition-related issues, such as diabetes, heart disease, renal disease, etc etc.
Clinical nutrition settings are usually in hospitals or long-term care facilities. This is the setting I’ve been working for the last 3 years. In the hospital setting, there’s an interdisciplinary component where you are working with doctors, nurses, speech therapist, social workers to care fo a patient. The goal is to optimize the patient’s nutrition status. You see a variety of patients and make recommendations based on anthropometric measures, labs, medical history, and diagnoses. You also a wider variety of things such as, patient education, recommendations for tubefeedings/IV feedings rates, and making sure the patient is eating well. So far, I’ve been enjoying the clinical side as it is very challenging; there’s always more to learn and interesting cases to see! However, I’m actually in the process of possibly transferring to the clinic side, as the working schedule in the hospital settings require you to work certain weekends and holidays. I think for my personal well-being a more structured schedule is better for me.
I hope this gives you some insight to what RDs do. Please feel free to email me more with any questions!
This was so helpful for me! I didn’t know that RDs were so prominent in so many different fields. There are plenty of options out there for those like me who are considering this career path.
