My perspective

Before I start, it might be useful to tell you a little about me and my journey to becoming a dietitian. You know, put into perspective where some of my viewpoints might be coming from.

Firstly, I am a registered Dietitian based in Ireland. I spent my entire college and working life in Ireland, so I guess my perspective is mostly based on the Irish system.

When did I know I wanted to become a dietitian?

I guess I knew that I wanted to be a dietitian by the age of 16. I loved the subject of “home economics” in secondary school, and also loved biology and chemistry. I do suppose my idea of what a dietitian did back then was a little different than what I ended up doing… I thought dietitians spent most of their day in a typical clinic setting, dreamily talking about healthy eating from a disease prevention point-of-view. I was a hippy kid, and the concept of saving the world one carrot at a time seemed pretty cool. However, the idea that dietitians worked mainly in a hospital here in Ireland had not quite hit home until I got into college! But that’s a different story.

Where did I study to become a dietitian?

Anyway, I studied my bachelor degree of Human Nutrition and Dietetics between The Dublin Institute of Technology (now the Technical University of Dublin) and Trinity College Dublin, and graduated in 2015.

Where have I worked as a dietitian so far?

In my first year working, I worked 5 different jobs around Ireland. I started in an acute hospital in the south of Ireland, and then moved to a rehabilitation hospital/nursing home. After that I first worked part-time small acute hospital and part-time large rehabilitation hospital, and then switched to part-time large acute teaching hospital while still staying part-time in the rehab hospital. By the end of that mad first year, I was offered a permanent staff grade position in another large Dublin teaching hospital. I worked there fulltime for 2 years, after which I switched to a part-time senior position there. I now work that senior job 3 days a week, and have started a dietetic consultancy business in my other 2 days.

That’s my career in a nutshell. From teenage hippy ideals, to deep diving into a clinical dietetics degree, to working in various clinical settings, to now going back to some part-time element of creative disease prevention dietetics through my consultancy!

So to start answering your questions, I will run through college-based questions first, followed by job-related questions, and end with my perspective on life as a dietitian.

College-based dietitian questions

Where can I study to become a dietitian?

In Ireland there is currently one undergraduate degree, hosted by TUD and Trinity college. There are 3 masters programmes that opened up in the past few years in UCD, UL and UCC. One little comment if you hope to become a dietitian is that you must do a course in “dietetics” to be able to call yourself a dietitian. There are several nutrition degrees out there, but these do not give you a degree to become a dietitian. I covered the differences between a dietitian and nutritionist in a previous post which you can find here.

Are students paid during clinical placements?

First of all, to register as a dietitian, you must complete 1000 hours of clinical placements. For me, these placements were split in three and mostly took part during my summer holidays. 

To answer your question, unfortunately clinical dietetic placements in Ireland are unpaid. And while I was able to work a weekend job during my first two placements, I found my final placement too challenging to be able to continue working through. You can only work 7 days a week for so many years in a row…  This was definitely challenging and required a bit of financial planning.

How hard was the undergraduate degree? And do you have any suggestions?

I found some elements of the undergrad harder than others. I guess everyone will experience this differently. I definitely found the chemistry aspects tough. There was simply lots of memorising to do, and I’m much more of a practical person. I loved the psychology and role-playing aspects of the course, and found these easier simply because they came more natural to me. The clinical placements were pretty tough too, but I really enjoyed putting all my study into practice. 

One of my key suggestions for getting through the course is to ask plenty of questions. Your lecturers and placement tutors have a wealth of experience. I am still in touch with (and are hounded by) some of my college lecturers, and would not hesitate even now to turn to them with a question or for advice. Dietetics in Ireland is still a pretty small world, and I have found most dietitians are very happy to help you develop your skills and get the most out of your training!

Is school enough to be good at your job? Or do you need to participate lots of courses to stay competent at your job?

So after finishing college and placements, you are ready to get to work as a dietitian. However, to stay registered as a dietitian, you must complete 30 hours of study every year. This study must be a mix of attending courses and seminars, and doing self-directed reflection and learning. This is super important, because research into nutrition and diets is constantly evolving, and we must do our best to keep up with it to provide our patients and clients with the best nutritional care possible.

Job specific dietitian questions:

What would be the job situation once you are graduated? What are the graduates doing generally? 

It seems that the past few years there have been a good number of staff grade posts available for new grads. Most newly qualified dietitians seem to go straight into clinical jobs such as working in hospitals and primary/community care. I feel this is what dietetic courses prepare us for most to be honest. They are pretty clinically-orientated. Some new grad dietitians have gone into jobs for nutrition companies though, and some go straight into research or masters/PHD roles. I’ve seen a lot of PHD positions advertised recently actually, so yes that is definitely also an option for some.

Where do dietitians work?

There are several areas that a dietitian could go into. As I already said, in Ireland most dietitians work in hospitals or community health care settings. There they could work doing clinics, home visits or they could be working with inpatients on a specific ward or speciality area.

However, there are also dietitians working for nutrition companies, for example developing or promoting nutritional supplements or feeds. Again other dietitians may work in research, either to complete PhD’s or to help to further our understanding of nutrition and diets. And then there are a few dietitians who work privately, either running a private clinic, or doing consultancy work for food companies or the media.

What are the differences between a hospital role and a clinical dietitian role? 

So a clinical dietitian really means that they work in a clinical setting. I guess I would describe this as “working with people”. So dietitians working in a hospital tend to work clinically, as do dietitians in the community health care settings, and dietitians with private clinics. Non-clinical dietetics is possibly more related to dietitians working in nutrition companies, doing research or working in a consultancy setting with the media and food companies. But guys, feel free to correct me here if I’m wrong!

How does the financial part look? Can an average dietician save money for future?

Dietitians who work in a government-led role in Ireland tend to have national pay scales. You can find the link to these pay-scales here. From my experience, these scales work on 4 different levels. You start off as a basic grade dietitian. After three years you may start applying for senior grade posts. Then based on your expertise and interests, you may decide over time to go for managerial or clinical specialist roles. Similar scales apply in private hospitals, but I have heard that these may be somewhat more open to negotiating.

I believe that pay scales for research and nutritional company roles may be somewhat different. And of course working in private practice means your income is dependant on your pricing and the amount of clients or contracts you attract.

I suppose looking at national averages, it seems that the dietetic pay scales mostly match the national averages for income. Personally, I am very lucky to have reasonably affordable accommodation, and I have no kids at this time. And I feel that I am able to live a relatively comfortable life on my current part-time senior pay scale and my private practice income. But ofcourse, everyone’s situation will be completely different, so checking out the pay scales yourself would be my best answer here!

My perspective on being a dietitian.

Overall, are you happy with your job?

To be honest, I have had my ups and downs with my job satisfaction over the past years. I guess job satisfaction is a very personal thing, and different elements of dietetics will appeal to different personality traits.

At times I have loved my job, and at times I have felt like I had lost my sense of purpose and enjoyment in my job. And over these past 5 years I have learnt that for me to feel most satisfied in my role, I need to be challenged. I have found myself surprisingly (and at times embarrassingly) prone to boredom. The times when I have loved my job most were the times when I was super busy in work, or knee-deep in an important project, or busy learning about a whole new speciality or a whole new skill. Over this career so far I have been blessed with managers who have given me space to develop my skills and who have honoured my creative streak by throwing projects my way.

And now, I have possibly found a balance that still feels too good to be true. I get to challenge myself clinically by working in the complex speciality of kidney disease, where I am responsible for guiding people with a chronic disease through one of the most difficult diets out there. And meanwhile, I get to play out my creative streak by challenging myself to set up my consultancy business. From website building, to video production, and from doing seminars in large IT companies to helping clients in 1:1 virtual clinics, this side hustle is anything but boring – and so it keeps me happy in other ways!

What is your favourite thing about your job?

Talking to people, be it patient or client or colleague. I love the social connection. Whether I am simply offering a listening ear and a moment of kindness to a patient, or am empowering student dietitians to apply their motivational interviewing skills in practice – the listening, teaching and connecting with people is my favourite aspect of the job.

What is the hardest thing about your job? What is it that make you complain the most?

Two things come to mind here. Firstly, I have found some of the staff shortages very tough to handle. For example, I really struggled working in a role in stroke care where I was so busy that I only had time to look after the sickest patients who required artificial feeding. This meant that I could not dedicate the also important time to helping the less acute patients improve their diets to help prevent future strokes. Having to decline consults for super motivated patients willing to make important lifestyle changes was so tough!

And secondly, despite working for half a decade by now, I still do not cope well with death. Working in a hospital will inevitably mean you lose patients. And I guess I occasionally find myself growing a little too attached to some of my patients. Especially now that I work in chronic disease, where I get to know patients over several years, I struggle regularly when they become unwell or pass away.

Do you feel that you could continue until you’re 65?

In all fairness, I had a little mid-20s crisis in 2018 where there idea of working solely as a clinical dietitian for 40 more years worried me. At that time, I was working full time in a role where I was constantly under pressure and felt that I wasn’t able to give my best to my patients because it was so busy. I guess I felt like I had lost touch with why I originally wanted to study dietetics – to help in disease prevention rather than nutritional firefighting when disease has already struck.

So I found that starting my blog during this crisis helped me find my mojo again in my career. This blog led me to consider private practice, and here we are now. Honestly, what I’m doing right now – part-time private practice and part-time hospital suits me much better. And yes – I could imagine myself doing this type of dietetics for another 40 years!

I guess it’s important to keep checking in with yourself when you are starting to work as a dietitian. What aspects am I enjoying of this role? What other areas would I like to try out? Where do I see myself in 5-10 years from now. You may not start off working in the area of your dreams, but stay aware of your goals, and focus on grabbing new opportunities as they arise that will help you get there.

I hope I have answered your questions here today! If you have any more questions, please get in touch via the comment section below, or via DM on my social media pages! Make sure that you subscribe to my Youtube channel! And  if you hit that little bell button on my channel page, you will get notified when my next video comes out. I hope to catch you on my facebook, instagram, twitter and pinterest pages, where I’ll keep the conversation going until my next post!