Second Year in Review

This past fall semester, I had the opportunity to take an honors seminar called The Global Obesity Epidemic. It has so far, been one of the most influential honors experiences I have had to date because it relates so much to my personal field of study and taught me a lot about how to develop my skills as a healthcare professional. I am so lucky to have a seminar that was so in tune with my passion for healthcare and nutrition, as I know that many offered seminars give students the ability to learn more about a topic outside of their coursework. While I welcome that possibility as well, I chose to deepen my understanding of nutrition with this seminar. 

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While taking this seminar, we discussed a lot of certain topics and debated some scenarios related to the obesity epidemic that our country continues to face. One of these debates was about whether or not we think placing a tax on soda purchases would curb obesity rates. We talked about the benefits and risks of this, and it helped open my mind to how obesity really works in a social sense, rather than just the biological aspect that I was used to learning in class. I think that while being so caught up in classwork, it is very important to keep in mind that we are learning about the processes and treatment of real people who deal with the problems you help them through, all the time. In this class, we focused on that a lot and talked about all the issues that obese people face that we have not thought of before.

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We gave presentations on different common aspects of life that being obese can make difficult, such as receiving quality healthcare, navigating the legal system, working on relationships with friends, family, and significant others, and more. We examined these systems and how biases against obese people affect their lives. It was an eye-opening experience for me because I do not know anyone who is affected by obesity in these ways, and it helped me better understand the kinds of issues that people whom I will treat in my career, go through. 

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In the future, I hope to take more time outside of my standard coursework to work with patients and clients and understand their lives in a more social aspect, rather than simply treating them like another case I have to work on. After only my second year of undergrad, I feel like I have learned more about bedside manner and similar components of being a healthcare professional that I only hope to improve upon in the coming years.

 

In the next year, I hope to volunteer again in a healthcare setting that will help me work further on my bedside manner skills and share what I learned with my peers and professors. In my accelerated nutrition program, a lot of our undergraduate coursework is centered on the science behind nutrition and nutrition-related issues like obesity, but we don't get much into the social and ethical aspects of these issues until the graduate level. I would be willing to share with my professors how important it is to start talking about our patients in a different way and "humanize" them early on so that we ensure that every graduating class of dietitians is composed of caring people who want to make a difference in the lives of our patients/clients.