Newsworthy
It’s National Nutrition Month – Lettuce Celebrate!
Food is the fuel your body needs to live a healthy and happy lifestyle – make sure you are giving it the nutritious and nourishing food it deserves!
Stormont Vail Health knows that nutrition is key and works hard every day to ensure that it’s patients, community, and team members have the resources necessary to successfully fuel their bodies.
NUTRITIONAL SERVICES
Nutritional Services makes up the team that puts love, care, and nutrients into their work every day. If you have ever eaten within the walls of Stormont Vail, you have this team to thank for the amazing options and execution! On top of this feat, the Nutritional Services team also provides a helping hand across the organization.
“Nutritional services interact with almost every department within the hospital,” said Ed Haas, Director of Nutritional Services. “Each department has different needs and we get to find ways to help meet those needs. That could be feeding a daycare on a daily basis, assisting with a coffee dispenser for a new patient area, or catering an event.”
As if that’s not enough, this team is also working on increasing the healthy options on the café and patient menus as well as finding new ways to improve access to food through technology, like online ordering for patients and team members.
WEIGHT MANAGEMENT
“Can I just say that our team at weight management is absolutely awesome and I’m not just saying that!” stated Jill Nitzsche, APRN-C.
“I think any patient that comes to our program can vouch for that. You truly can tell when a provider loves their job and I feel like our providers at weight management shine because we all truly love our job and what we do. We all want to see our patients succeed. If our patients don’t succeed, then we feel like we didn’t do our job!”
The Weight Management team at Stormont Vail offers a multitude of tools and resources to help patients on their health journey. Each program is individualized during each phase of the process to make sure that they’re doing what is going to work for YOU.
A few nutrition tips from Jill are to: add more greens to your plate, increase your fiber intake, drink lots of water, limit added sugar, eat on a smaller plate.
CLINCIAL NUTRITION & EDUCATION
Shelley Carley, MBA, RD, LD is the Clinical Nutrition Manager for Stormont Vail. Amongst the amazing things she does for our patients, Shelley recently proposed to increase the budget for continuing education credits for the In-patient Clinical Dietitian team members that she leads and it was approved!
“Continuing education credits can lead to knowledge to continually strive for the highest quality of care and best practices for our patients,” said Carley. “We believe in having one on one conversations with the patients to assess each as an individual. We consistently review processes with other disciplines to create an efficient and effective team for patient care.”
WELLPOWER
On top of making sure that patients are receiving the top line of nutritional care, Stormont Vail makes it part of the mission to keeping its team members healthy too. Wellpower is a program provided that allows for team members to access different health resources, classes, and accountability. They also partner with Weight Management to make sure that employee health stays at the forefront.
Staying on top of your nutrition is one of the best things you can do for your overall wellbeing. Be sure that if you are reaching out to a registered dietician or speaking with your Stormont Vail provider on ways to make sure your diet includes all the nutrients it needs to sustain the lifestyle you want to live.
THANK YOU, to everyone who works in the Nutritional Services industry!