Dietary department...(ranting!!)

RNonsense · Mar 24, 2003

Vent away...it's like that here too. No idea why. Budget? Portion police? Who knows...

deespoohbear · Mar 24, 2003

Originally posted by RNonsense
Vent away...it's like that here too. No idea why. Budget? Portion police? Who knows...

I don't what is causing the burr up their butt lately. You would think that the extra money that the food costs (all $2.13 of it) was being taken right out of their pockets for pete's sake. They act like the nursing staff doesn't have enough sense to come in out of the rain. I am not talking about renal patients here who definitely have to have a regimented diet, but just your average people. I always thought a good appetite was a sign of good health. So very often most patients don't eat enough to keep a bird alive, and I have someone cleaning his plate and asking for more. That is a nice change of pace for me.

I definitely plan to talk to my boss Monday, as do some of my co-workers. This weekend was flat out ridiculous.

sjoe · Mar 24, 2003

It sounds as though your nursing department needs an inservice with dietary, and vice versa.

Edward,IL · Mar 24, 2003

I worked in a large university teaching hospital until 10 years ago. Dietary was awful.

1) Cockroaches coming outof the food cart when meals were delivered to floor.

2) No requests taken after 8:00pm because they closed an dwent home at 8:30 PM

3) They did leave the keys to the kitchen with the Nursing House supervisor/adinistrstor on-call. That meant that the nursing sup.was making sandwiches at midnight.

4) It got worse when they gave the dietary contract to ARA services.

5) My last few years there we finally just subverted the system and called the take-out Chinese restaurant in our area. They deliver to the ER regularly. We had to pay out of pocket for this, but they never hasseled us, the food was good and we didn't have to be so embarrassed in front of our patients.

One more reason why I left hospital nursing. Edward

P_RN, ADN, RN · Mar 24, 2003

I must say here that I have seen staff order extra food, desserts etc "for the patients" and then eat the stuff themselves.

I also know that many of the patient "snacks" never made it to actual patients. Perhaps the dietary dept. has been burned onece too often by this kind of thing. And this happened on all shifts. I have also seen staff helping themselves to the food on trays of patients they were feeding.

I agree Nursing and Dietary need to have a meeting, but all this is not dietary's problem

Tweety, BSN, RN · Mar 24, 2003

I can't believe that you actually had to call a doctor with such foolishness. We simply order in the computer, send double portions, send extra tray now. And we get it. No questions asked. Lucky I guess.

esselmulen · Mar 24, 2003

Originally posted by sjoe
It sounds as though your nursing department needs an inservice with dietary, and vice versa.

For years we've been trying to solve problems with dietary, inservices have been of no help. We sit around the conference table, each gives his/her views, everybody smiles and shakes hands and promises a new era of love and cooperation and the next day, it's the same old stuff. My way to deal with it? I've ingratiated myself with a few of the dietary people and am thus able to generally bypass the goons who think we nurses are eating up all their food. Hope this helps.

deespoohbear · Mar 24, 2003

Originally posted by P_RN
I agree Nursing and Dietary need to have a meeting, but all this is not dietary's problem

It is a power struggle with the dietary department, period. Our dietary department supervisor is so warped he got the administrator of the hospital to make a rule that the hospital staff cannot take food out of the cafeteria at meal/break time. :rolleyes: Our cafeteria is too small and there is no way the hospital employees and visitors will fit in the dining area at meal time. Who cares where the hospital staff eats as long as it is not in patient care areas or other inappropriate areas? Our pantry is stocked with Pepsi and 7-UP products. Occasionally we get a pt who prefers Coke products (and are kept in the dietary department). We have actually had to argue with the dietary department to bring up Coke instead of Pepsi (again for a pt with no restrictions whatsoever). How can nursing be to blame because a patient preferes Coca-Cola over Pepsi? Or that a relatively young man with a DVT would like a second tray? Nursing is suppose to be able to control the preferences of the patients now? :rolleyes:

frannybee · Mar 24, 2003

We have a freezer full of frozen meals (curries, cottage pies etc) that we can bung in the microwave if we need a meal in a hurry. We also have a little oven and bags of frozen chips (fries) that we can cook up if we have a picky eater. As for the Coke/Pepsi battle, we have drink machines. That's it. You want anything other than tea/coffee/hot chocolate/cordial/horlicks or water, you bring it in yourself or have your family do so.

FullMoonMadness · Mar 24, 2003

Franny,please,what is horlicks?

deespoohbear · Mar 24, 2003

We have frozen meals too, that the staff has been accused of eating. Yuck. I won't serve those things to the patients much less eat them myself. To be accused of stealing and eating them is a direct smack in the face as far as I am concerned.

We are a small hospital. We don't have everything the bigger hospitals have that supposedly makes them "better." What we do have is the chance to give a little hometown kindness to our patients and their families. Dietary is making this very difficult for us. Almost all families who are staying with a very sick and/or dying relative appreciate a hot cup of coffee, or tea (or whatever their preference) or a pastry once in awhile while they keep their vigil. And for the patients who request that little extra something once in awhile and receives it makes them feel special and goes a long way in PR department for our facility. A little positive press is a good thing, especially in this day and age of cut-throat advertising.