These are all the clinical nutrition resources that will support dietitians new to clinical. Use these cheat sheets and stop memorizing.
New to clinical nutrition? Start here.
You’ve been to school for nutrition. You’ve been accepted to a dietetic internship. Maybe you’ve even passed your RD exam by now. But you’re still struggling with the basics of clinical nutrition.
WTF?! After all this time you spent LEARNING nutrition, shouldn’t it mean you know how to DO nutrition?
In a perfect world, that’s exactly what it should mean. Unfortunately, there are a lot of gaps in the way we learn to do nutrition counseling and clinical nutrition.
The good news is if you’ve gotten this far, you have the foundation you need to be a really great dietitian. All you need is an extra little boost to give you some of those real life tips you hoped to get from a professor or your preceptors.
Start with these clinical nutrition resources to get you on track to be a great clinical dietitian.
6 clinical nutrition resources for new RDs
This is a list of 6 clinical nutrition resources that support every nutrition care plan you’ll create. Whether you’re an RD new to clinical nutrition or are jumping into long-term care nutrition work. These will work for you.
This toolkit includes include:
- Lab work and Common Interactions
- 5 Must-Know Calculations
- PES Statement Best Practices (even if they aren’t required)
- Malnutrition Screening Tool
- 3 common ICU protocols
- Common medicine-nutrient interactions
Get all the entire toolkit HERE.
Common Labs and their Implications
Without question, labs are one of the hardest things to figure out when starting out in clinical nutrition.
This simple cheat sheet is a quick reminder of how each key lab value plays a role in how we determine the overall nutrition care plan.
5 Must-Know Nutrition Calculations
There are a lot of moving parts when we sit down to write a nutrition note. Stop trying to memorize these basic nutrition calculations and use this cheat sheet instead.
This handout covers ideal body weight, adjusted body weight, enteral nutrition diet orders and TPN diet orders calculation. These can feel almost impossible to figure out, until you’ve got an easy way to remember them. This handout makes that happen.
PES Statement Best Practices
Not every facility requires us to write PES statements, which is a huge relief to most of us. But the hard truth is that PES statements are really good at helping us figure out WHAT is important and WHY it’s important.
This 4 page cheat sheet gives clear direction on how to formulate clear nutrition PES statements for care notes. Also includes some great examples you’ll be able to use over and over.
Malnutrition Screening Tool
As acute care and long-term care clinical dietitians, we see a lot of patients who are at high risk for malnutrition.
This simple reference guide makes determining risk status super simple. Keep it close for fast reference when working through weight status and evaluating malnutrition in each patient.
3 Common Critical Care Protocols
Very often, as new dietitians, we rotate through different units and niches until we find something that feels right to us. The ICU is usually the scariest unit of all, and the one that we usually feel the least prepared for.
This handout covers the basics of refeeding syndrome, pressure ulcer basics and dealing with a catabolic patient who needs enteral feeding. Some of the common issues you’ll see in the critical care side of nutrition.
Common Drug-Nutrient Interactions
Most of the time, there are only a few medications that we see over and over again in our patients. That makes it easy — once we already know what we’re looking for.
This 4 page handout zeros in on the most common drug-nutrient interactions, and what nutrients should be managed when we create our nutrition care plan. This will help us be careful when writing the diet order, with our nutrition counseling and our client communications
And That’s It!
And those are the 6 essential clinical resources that can help you become a confident and successful clinical dietitian. You get everything that’s needed to do clinical work all in one place. It’s a perfect starting place for new dietitians and RDs returning to clinical work after some time away.
Ready to get them all? Download everything in The Essentials: Clinical Nutrition Resources HERE.
Want even more to help in clinical?
Check out The Nutrition Cheat Sheets Shop for all the nutrition education and clinical resources that will make your life easier.
