BY NORM TOLLINSKY

The road is long and the going slow, but day-by-day, patient-by-patient, the message is getting through – now more than ever, as the first wave of graduates from the North’s new Dietetic Internship Program begin spreading the gospel.

Good health for Northerners, who suffer from some of the highest rates of diabetes, obesity and smoking in the province, is first and foremost dependent on a healthy, balanced diet.

Eight of the 10 graduates of the program’s inaugural class are busy counselling patients in family health team practices and promoting nutrition awareness in schools across the region.

In the absence of undergraduate dietetics programs at Northern Ontario’s two universities - Lakehead and Laurentian – Northerners interested in becoming dietitians have no choice but to leave the region. Prior to the establishment of the Northern Ontario Dietetic Internship Program, these students also did their internships down south, and were often recruited through the contacts they made during their rotations.

48 applicants

Erin Frank of Thunder Bay and Amanda Cividino of Sudbury, both graduates of Guelph University, learned about the North’s new internship program at a forum for graduating dietitians in the fall of 2006. They were among 48 graduates vying for the 10 internship positions in the North. Frank did her internship in Sault Ste. Marie, while Cividino was based in Sudbury, but both ended up with jobs in North Bay – Frank at the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit and Cividino at the Blue Sky Family Health Team.

Another graduate, Nicole Granville, from Gander, Newfoundland, did her internship in Sudbury and also landed a job at the Blue Sky Family Health Team. A graduate of Memorial University in St. John’s and Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Granville learned about the Northern Ontario Internship Program at a forum in Moncton.

“I was disappointed when I discovered that the program favoured residents of Northern Ontario, but I applied and talked my way into it,” she said.

Three of the graduates from the first class accepted jobs in Thunder Bay, one is in Sault Ste. Marie and one is in Terrace Bay.

Flooded with offers

The 10 graduates from the first class were flooded with offers - many of them from health-care organizations in southern Ontario.

During their 11-month internship, they did rotations in food service roles, public health units, community health centres and hospitals, working with preceptors to achieve a set of competencies prescribed by the College of Dietitians of Ontario.

Cividino and Granville chose to work in a family health team environment because of the exposure it offered to a greater variety of health issues. They are kept busy doing consultations focusing on diabetes, weight management and an assortment of gastrointestinal disorders. They also work with vegetarians and vegans, especially children, to ensure they are getting the nutrition they need.

Frank, whose position at the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit was open for more than a year, is focused on promoting healthy eating in schools. She joins a group of dietitians at health units across the region who are introducing a collection of nutrition-related resources to schools.

“We meet via teleconference to share ideas and pool resources,” said Frank. “Instead of one dietitian working on an idea for a media campaign, curriculum or action guides, we all work on it together.”

Elementary schools

The objective is to establish nutrition action committees in elementary schools and bring students, teachers and parents together to look at the nutrition environment and take steps to improve it.

“Some health units are implementing it now,” said Frank. “We’re planning to launch it in the North Bay Parry Sound District in 2009.”

A lot of people see dietitians as “the food police,” said Granville. “People come to us expecting us to give them a list of things not to eat, but it’s about what you eat every day, not about your Christmas dinner or your birthday cake. It’s about being physically active, moving more and eating in moderation. It’s not realistic to tell someone if their favorite food is fish and chips to never have it again because they’ll likely rebel.”

Willpower

Most people, she said, have an awareness of what they should be eating, but “they have a lot of trouble with willpower and planning. They wake up in the moving, get the kids ready for school and rush off to work without eating breakfast.”

The second class of 10 interns fanned out across the North in October and will begin considering job offers by next summer.

With more and more family health teams popping up in the region and increased funding for diabetes clinics, there is no shortage of opportunities for dietitians, said Diane Raftis, who oversees the Northern Ontario Internship Program under the umbrella of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine.

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