What role does an RD play in residential eating disorder treatment?
The residential RD wears a lot of hats! You are monitoring client meal plans and making adjustments as needed to help clients meet their needs appropriately. Individual nutrition counseling sessions happen weekly with each client as well as a weekly nutrition group with all clients in treatment. Group is a chance to be creative and get everyone involved in discussion and learning. A lot of meal times with clients are also part of the role. You will sit for dinner, help clients prepare meals when they have that privilege, and even take clients out to restaurant meals for exposure and practice eating fear foods and eating outside of the home. Residential care is for clients who are medically stable but require 24 hour supervision. They don’t have the medical complications that would necessitate inpatient hospitalization, but they still require monitoring of weights and vitals, support at all meals, supervision to prevent behaviors, and increased mental health support.
Describe a typical day in your life!
A typical day working in residential involved checking in on logs from overnight and meals that I missed to see if clients were completing their meals. I would catch up on notes, emails, and phone calls – sometimes reaching out to team members from a client’s referring team to get information and ensure a smooth transfer. I would run individual sessions and groups depending on the day and one day a week we had a staff meeting followed by me taking the clients out to lunch. Later in the day I might sit for a snack with the clients or have a supported challenge snack 1-1 with a client. Lots of documentation happens as well as catching up with coworkers!
How is work life balance?
I would work one later night where I had dinner and ran an evening nutrition group, but no weekends. The late night meant a later morning so that hours all evened out to a typical 8 hour day. The work life balance was okay – working at a higher level of care definitely brings quite a bit of stress. While you’re not working weekend hours in this role, it’s important to have your own support and stress management in place in order to be able to deal with the stress, pressure, and emotion of caring for clients in a vulnerable place.
What are the best aspects of your job?
The best part of working at this level of care is being able to see your clients so often and really form a connection that can be so supportive in their recovery work. It’s a space where the team gets to really closely support the clients and it feels home-y! It’s hard to see people struggle, but you also get the opportunity to witness great change
Were there any classes or experiences that helped you the most?
I chose to do an elective rotation at a residential treatment center in my internship and that really prepared me for this role. EDs are not something we learned about a ton in school, so pursuing opportunities to learn in my internship whenever possible was what allowed me to excel in the job.
Would you recommend working in residential as a first job?
I really appreciate my experience working in res and the fact that I learned there before working in PHP, IOP, and now private practice. There are so many learning opportunities at higher levels of care so it is a great first job because then you can use all that knowledge and skill in lower levels. You’ll know when a client needs to step up, and you will have seen more severe situations so it really is the best preparation for working in the field of eating disorders.
