When most people hear the term "dietitian", they think of health food experts and weight loss program gurus. But add "renal" to dietitian, and a whole new field of complexity is opened that few of us can even begin to appreciate. Just ask anyone who comes into contact with DCI's 2005 Employee of the Year, Laura Yates, MS, RD, CSR, LD.

A few months ago, Laura received a phone call at 7:30 a.m. one morning from Dave Hagewood, DCI Human Resources Director, asking, "Can I speak with you a moment?" Convinced she was being fired (because she could think of no other reason to receive a call from the Director of the HR department at 7:30 a.m.), she took the call in a private office. She was totally shocked "flabbergasted" - when he told her she had won this award.

Thirteen years ago, Laura began her career with DCI at the Columbus, GA clinic as a Renal Nutrition Specialist working nine hour Saturdays while she pursued her Master of Science degree in Nutrition. She continues to work every other Saturday to provide immediate feedback to the patients when lab results are available.

She now holds the title of Director of Nutrition Services for the Columbus, North Columbus, GA and Phenix City, AL clinics. In addition, she is the dietitian for approximately 144 patients at the North Columbus clinic. Laura is one of the very few renal dietitians to actually hold a supervisory position in the company.

 

As Director of the Nutrition Services Department, Laura has produced a very comprehensive manual that the members of the department use as a standing operating procedure. This handbook allows the dietitians to operate independently, yet still perform their jobs in the same consistent manner the clinic has determined best meets the level of quality desired. There is never a need to "guess" about what to do in any given instance. Should a situation arise that isn't covered in the manual, the manual is updated to include details for handling that new situation in the future, making it a "living" document.

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are available to everyone involved. Continuing education credit is earned through participation.

Her Curriculum Vitae includes numerous publications in professional journals. Some of these have been referenced in the American Dietetic Association's renal publications. She has several publications as a result of the research she did to earn her master's degree. She acknowledges this would have been difficult to complete without the financial support provided by DCI in the form of monies from a research grant she wrote. She also has been active in both local and national renal nutrition organizations

and is an associate member of the International Society of Renal Nutrition and Metabolism.

She uses her background and training to develop tools which members of her department use to evaluate the nutritional status of the patients and develop a plan of care for them. For example, the dietitians assess the patients' grip strength using a hand dynamometer to document changes in the ability of patients to feed themselves. Another tool is the vision test. Knowing that patients cannot read what they cannot see, she developed a vision test that members of the department use to make sure the patients can see the size print on the educational material they are given. Patients are always included in the development of new materials. She believes that her job is not to make decisions for the patient, but to provide the patient with the education and tools to make their own decisions that will improve their nutritional status. Laura says "If I could take them all home with me and force feed them and make them take their binders, there wouldn't be a problem. But I can't do that." Discovering how each patient learns is integral to helping them help themselves. Members of her department are now working on developing an assessment tool to identify how each patient learns.

Under Laura's direction, dietitians are expected to see each patient when the dietitian is in the clinic ensuring any problems are detected early. 

In the event that a patient is transferred to a hospital, she has developed a form the dietitian completes about the patient and sends along with the most recent labs

to the hospital dietitian, thus promoting continuity of care.

She encourages prospective dietitians to explore renal nutrition as a professional opportunity. Laura has been a preceptor since 1992 for dietetic interns from the Georgia Department of Health and Human Services. She provides a supervised experience in renal nutrition as a component of the clinical experience that allows the intern to ultimately sit for the registration exam. Laura hopes to bring more well-trained prospects into the renal field - and hopefully to DC!.

Laura's interest in a career in healthcare began very early. Her sister suffered from juvenile onset diabetes, and was the first diabetic her nephrologist started on dialysis in Baltimore. But she credits the nephrologists from her first employment, Dr. Oved Soffer, with very quickly changing her professional focus from cardiac patients to renal patients. She believes she has been very fortunate to work with Dr. David White, and Drs. Manoj and Kamlesh Patel as well as Dr. Soffer.

It's hard to imagine that Laura would have enough free time to ever go on vacation, but she does. She and her husband are avid travelers, despite the fact that he is on dialysis. His need for dialysis does mean that their getaways require a bit more planning than the typical vacation would, but they have recently been to Scotland and on a cruise of the Western Caribbean. They are currently planning a cruise to the Mediterranean. Regardless of where she is she carries a laptop computer so she can provide support to the dietitians in the department.

Laura's husband is very conscious of the amount of time and energy that must be expended by her to enable her to perform her job at the exemplary level she does. He has called her "The Energizer Bunny" because of her enthusiasm. Joe Butler adds that Laura goes about her numerous duties at the clinics, always leaning forward with momentum, eager to tackle the next assignment. Laura is quick to say that she could accomplish nothing without the working relationship she has with her co-workers. From the Nurse Manager, Social Services Department, to the charge nurses, patient care staff, lab technician and secretaries, not to mention the members of her own department, each person she interacts with truly has a grasp of not only what their particular job entails, but also how their job affects that of every other position in the clinics. She tells how they all work together to

ensure everything that should be done, has been done. No wonder she was chosen as DCI's 2005 Employee of the Year.

- Susan Knowlton