Present Status of Dietetic Internship Program in Korea

Kim, Su Jung; Lim, Hyun jung; Cho, Young Mi; Lee, Hei Ok; Choue, Ryowon

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop the standardized manual for dietetic internship. The general information of the dietetic internship program in Korea was gathered and of dietetic internship(DI) in the USA was also surveyed. The existence of DI program manual, the number of intern and length of the dietetic internship program, and other general information were investigated. At first, the questionnaire was developed and mailed to 130 hospitals in Korea and the number of returned questionnaires was 42 showing participating rate of 28%. Second, telephone survey was carried out and the number of response was 40 out of 46 participating rate of 87%. The results of this study could be summarized as follow. 1. General informations of dietetic internship program in Korea; The hospital having a dietetic internship program was 31.7% and of them 14.6%(12 hospitals) have a manual developed by themselves. The number of dietetic intern per hospital was 2.0+/-1.4. The length of the program was from 3 to 12 months. Ten hospitals (38.5%) have a only food service program and 16 hospitals (62.5%) have both food service and clinical program. Seventy one percent (58 hospitals) of total hospital were willing to use the well developed standardized dietetic internship manual. 2. General information of Dietetic Internship Program in the USA; Two hundred fifty nine hospital had the dietetic internship program approved by ADA. The number of dietetic intern in each hospital was 10.6+/-6.3. The mean length of the program was 13.6+/-6.3 months. Twenty seven percent of institution have coordinated internship/masters degree program. The range of tuition for DI program was from $300 to 30,855(otherwise, interns were payed by the hospital in Korea). As a conclusion, the standardized dietetic internship program for the clinical dietitian as nutrition professionals to carry out their job at the hospitals should be developed. And the coordinated internship/masters degree program could be considered to improve the skill levels and job performances of clinical dietitian.