Elisabeth Unger

Overnight to Zürich

After weeks of preparations involving the insurance, employment contract and other organisational issues, the time finally arrived. On the evening of 29 June 2015, I took up residence in the cabin of my sleeper train from Graz to Zürich and was transported to one of Europe’s best cities to live in (in my opinion) overnight.

Despite being somewhat tired and out of sorts from the long train journey, I was taken with Zürich from the very beginning. Even the large and attractive central train station on the Bahnhofstrasse brought an early smile to my face. And I couldn’t hide my happiness when I realised just how likeable, happy and friendly the people I encountered on the street were.

I also experienced this friendliness and positive attitude in my work at the Triemli municipal hospital. The two internship instructors in the nutritional advice team always had time for me. During the first few days, I had the valuable opportunity to get to know all of the hospital and its infrastructure. This was very beneficial to me during my subsequent work as part of the nutritional advice team.

In addition to being involved with the general employee training, I also spent a day working in the kitchen and with the catering service. The tasks involved in catering in particular were completely new to me. At the start, I thought that this would involve nursing work – but I was wrong. The catering service involved things like serving meals, patient menu selections, serving drinks like teas, coffee and water, sip feeding, keeping food records and tending to the flowers in patient rooms. This gives the nursing staff more time and scope to provide medical and nursing care on the wards and enhances patient well-being at the hospital.

I was also amazed at the new things I learnt during my work with the nutritional team. The term ‘interdisciplinary team’ gained a whole new meaning for me. Giving long-term diabetes advice in cases where the patient was also receiving diabetes and nutritional support from a doctor or from the diabetes and nutritional counselling team, with the patient’s progress being evaluated by the team so as to set new treatment goals, is something I was familiar with in theoretical but not practical terms. If the situation required, the nutritional advice could also be provided in conjunction with a doctor or diabetes advisor to ensure that the patient would make the ideal progress.

Evaluation and adaptation were also accorded a high level of importance by the nutritional team. Once a year, personal and communal goals are set with the aim being to achieve these goals within the year. In my case, the team goal was ‘Raising awareness of malnutrition at the Triemli municipal hospital’ which dieticians pursued according to plan, based on various talks and new hospital guidelines. In general, the work was very well structured and supported by professional evidence-based knowledge. I encountered lots of new systems and methods of working which were very difficult for me to grasp, especially at the start and it took me a while to incorporate them. By the end of my internship, I can say with certainty that these are the things I learned the most about and have taken with me: teamwork, evaluations, defining goals, patient meetings in the team or with my internship instructor, useful research work, valuable feedback and tips on consulting techniques and much more. The new experiences and ideas which I acquired in Zürich are irreplaceable and I hope to be able to incorporate them into my future work as a dietician.