Community Outreach Project Summary

Lynnsey Bogash & Sarah Quon

NUTN 500

Winter 2018
 The Interdisciplinary Care Access Network (I-CAN) is a program developed by

Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) School of Nursing program. Its aim is to

follow the Academic-Practice Partnership and serve disadvantaged and underserved

clients, families, and populations in Portland greater metropolitan area and Southern

Oregon. By serving these communities, I-CAN addresses social determinants of health

by providing individuals with opportunities of health literacy development. I-CAN

allows for long-term commitment to these neighborhoods and their community

partners such as HeadStart, Family Nurturing Center, and La Clinica. The program

incorporates a faculty practice model while allowing OHSU students to participate in

an interdisciplinary team and develop learning experiences with healthcare

professionals. Moreover, I-CAN emphasizes the importance of communication in teams

through their schedule layout. Figure 1 describes the process and involved parties of

the program. Until August 2017, dietetic interns and nutrition education were not a

part of the interdisciplinary team or program. Being implemented into this program

allows for the integration of nutrition into the clients' healthcare experience, as well

as into the plan of action for the interdisciplinary team.

There were two main goals that we hoped to achieve during the process of

implementing dietetic interns into the I-CAN program. First, we wanted to

incorporate nutrition into the interdisciplinary team by creating job descriptions for

future dietetic interns to follow. These job descriptions include the roles that the

dietetic interns, I-CAN mentor, Community Project mentor, interdisciplinary team

students, and the organization faculty have within the program. We also wanted to

reinforce the importance of nutrition to the huddles and client meetings.

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 Evaluations were performed throughout the past two terms. Clients, faculty,

and participating students were asked a series of questions each term. For clients our

questions included: 1) How important is nutrition and diet to you? 2) When we have

discussed nutrition, what has been the most helpful/useful? 3) What additional items

would you like to discuss next term? 4) What has it been like having the availability of

a nutritionist at these consultations? 5) What is one think you have learned from me?

6) One idea we would like your thoughts on is having more focused time to talk about

nutrition during the home visits; what are your thoughts on that? Please be honest.

There are no right or wrong answers. Each term clients were asked these questions to

assess if there is any change of answers and opinions on how they perceive nutrition

playing a role in their life and health. During the first assessment, three out of four

clients did not have any nutrition knowledge or education prior to our involvement.

One out of four had some nutrition knowledge, but used ideas primarily given to her

by a past cage fighting coach, and what she reads on social media. All clients reported

education as a high relevance to them. When asked about the best strategy of

providing education, all clients mentioned some form of just talking about what they

have going on in their lives. All clients found having a nutritionist present was

beneficial, having a nutrition focused visit was important, and were able to name one

specific item that we taught them. However, over the course of both terms, it

became noticeable that clients’ answers remained complacent and the same. While

they saw relevance and perceived dietetic interns’ availability as useful, they still had

many barriers when it came to making dietary changes in their life. For example, one

client continued to not follow through on hydration SMART goals throughout the two

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terms. Another client would mention that they ran out of time, and they would just

reference to us if they had any particular questions. While the importance of nutrition

was emphasized through clients, they continued to have barriers of making a change.

Pre-Huddles and huddles were used to assess faculty and participating students’

opinions on the plan of care for the client. These conversations were more broad and

less specific than the conversations with our clientele. Our questions included: 1) How

do you see nutrition as a part of a care plan for clients? 2) What is your knowledge

basis of nutrition thus far? 3) On a scale of 1-10, 1 being low and 10 being high, how

relevant is nutrition education and advisement. Both terms had different participating

members, specifically nursing students and faculty supervisors, thus trends were

unable to be observed. All members noted that they did not have prior nutrition

education and they see it as playing a large role in these clients’ lives.

While this project aims to further assimilate dietetic interns into the I-CAN

program, more emphasis needs to be put into lowering the barrier for nutrition

changes. Additionally, more education should be provided to participating members to

provide them a collective idea of how we aim to further provide care for clients.

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 References

Figure 1: