Dietician

What Does a Dietician Do?

Here are just a few examples:

• educating and advising clients on how food and healthy eating habits can prevent illness and achieve and maintain optimum health
educating and advising a wide range of patients on how therapeutic diets and dietary therapy can improve the management of their conditions
calculating individual’s nutritional requirements using standard equations based on assessments of blood chemistry, temperature, stress, mobility and other relevant factors
analysing the nutritional content of food
devising eating plans and manipulating recipes
delivering group sessions to a variety of audiences, including children and patient groups
educating other healthcare and non health care professionals about food and nutrition issues;
working with large companies to support well being programmes for staff
advising catering departments about specific dietary requirements
running clinics in hospital outpatients departments or general practitioners’ (GP) surgeries for patients who have been referred by hospital consultants, GPs or health visitors
advising athletes and sports persons on how diet can optimise performance and recovery from injury

How Do I Become a Dietician?

 

The process for becoming a registered dietician is kind of confusing from what I gather, so I will do my best to try and explain it here. There are two basic routes, as depicted by the following lovely flowchart: 

 

 

Track 1: Integrated Internship Route

• Complete an undergraduate degree in dietetics with an internship. These programs are available at the following schools: UBC, Saskatchewan, McGill, Montreal, Laval, Moncton, Ottawa
• It looks like most of these programs admit students into the third year of an undergrad. You need to have at least 2 years of university credits, certain prerequisite courses, references, a paper, and get invited to an interview. Check out the above links for further info.
• Admission is highly competitive, but not as competitive as entry into a Masters program

Track 2: Post-Degree Internship Route

• Click here for a full list of schools that offer the program. In Ontario, Guelph, Ryerson, and Western offer them
• You need to have a 4 year honours degree from an accredited dietetic program completed within the last 3 years
• Minimum GPA of 75%
• Need to have taken statistics and research methods, possibly other prerequisites (check out the school websites)

For more information on how to become a registered dietician, please click here