My Working Day: Marguerite O'Donnell, community dietitian manager for HSE West on how she juggles her job to keep abreast of changing trends
My job involves planning and managing community nutrition and dietetic services across the counties of Galway, Mayo and Roscommon.
Every day is different but on a typical day, I work from 9.30am to 5.30pm if I am in the office. I often have to attend meetings in Dublin, which means getting the 7am train up and getting home at 7.30pm.
I manage the community dieticians who deliver a range of different projects in the HSE West, within the birth-to-death care groups. One of our dietitians works in the implementation of healthy eating in the schools, while another works with the Healthy Food Made Easy peer-led programme for disadvantaged groups in Galway city.
I also manage a dietitian who provides a community nutrition service for clients with intellectual disability and autism, working with voluntary organisations such as the Brothers of Charity and the Galway Association.
I plan and deliver primary care dietetic clinics for patients with diet-related disorders such as diabetes, coronary heart disease, obesity, irritable bowel and coeliac disease. I provide general nutritional education sessions for community groups and health professionals and each of the dieticians provides supermarket education tours in their areas.
My role is very diverse. I could be working with a community group retailers or the media on any day. There's great mix of clinical, nutrition promotion, education and research work.
I tend to work on a project by project basis. There are different themes for different times of the year. At the moment, the theme is obesity. When I am in the office, I spend my time answering emails, responding to queries and meeting the individual community dietitians to discuss their specific care groups. Other days, I could be out at meetings all day. Once a month, I do a clinic where I see patients referred with diet-related disorders by their GPs.
From a strategic point of view, I have to look at what resources are needed and try to develop the services accordingly. Community nutrition is a relatively new discipline within the health services, which means I must constantly read up on different conditions and disorders because treatments change all the time.
The most difficult part of the job is juggling to keep all the programmes on deadline and trying to get enough time to read all the material I need to read. I find this easier to do at home but sometimes, it can be hard to switch off and, with three children, I have to try to maintain a healthy work/life balance.
One of the things I find hardest in my job is having to say no to requests for certain services, such as home visits or services for children with intellectual disabilities, because we have such limited manpower. We need to expand the community nutrition services into these areas.
Overall, I love my job, I couldn't ask for a nicer job. And the team are all very dedicated, professional and hardworking.
I enjoy the diversity of the work and get great satisfaction from positive feedback. It's great to see the community nutrition services in the HSE West develop. When I came here in 1999, I was the only one. Now there are 10 of us and two more are on the way.
In conversation with Michelle McDonagh