At A Glance... The First Two Weeks

So, I had originally planned on posting at the end of each week of my internship. However, a post did not happen after the first week. I completed my first rotation in food service at New Hanover Regional Medical Center (NHRMC) with the Executive Chef Dennis. Let me start off by saying that Dennis was great! I learned a ton about both food service and management at NHRMC. My first day was a bit rocky because both of my preceptor contacts at the hospital were out on vacation. There was some confusion in our communication and Dennis thought that I would be starting a day later than I thought I was starting. So I showed up on my first day, went to employee health to complete my drug test, and got my name badge. After that, (with the help of a very nice volunteer) I found my way down to the nutrition services office. Once there, I found out that Dennis was on vacation and they sent me home. I came back the next day to meet with Dennis not knowing what I was supposed to do or bring. One of the first questions he asked me was if he could look at my curriculum, and of course in my nervousness for my first day I FORGOT IT! I was thinking to myself, wow what a great first impression. Dennis was very chill about it though, which put me at ease. My first day consisted of a ton of observation. The first thing I observed was the hot side of the tray line. That was followed by observation of the expo section of the tray line, and finally the cold side of the tray line.  The hot station cooks all of the hot food that is ordered by patients. The cold station takes care of all of the cold foods (salads and sandwiches). The expo station takes care of everything else; they are in charge of making sure all items on the ticket are present. The menu system at NHRMC is room service style. This means that patients can call down and order what they would like off of the menu (within the limitations of their diets). The rest of the week consisted of a general overview of the entire food service operation at the hospital. WOW, there is so much that goes on in the NHRMC kitchen. There operation is massive. They feed close to 400 patients at every meal, that is not including the cafe and other a la carte operations. I was able to participate in the ordering and receiving as well. They spend a lot of money on food, I had absolutely no idea. Looking at the order total, I was thinking to myself that I will never see that much money at one time during my lifetime! This past week consisted more of the managerial side of things. Monday and Tuesday were helping the team switch to the new ticket system. They used to print the entire ticket at the hot, cold and expo stations on the tray line. They new system printed the hot items only on a pink ticket at the hot station, the cold items only on a blue ticket at the cold station, and the entire ticket on white at the expo station. The transition started at lunch, which went relatively smoothly. Dinner was not as smooth, but still did not go terribly. Breakfast was the worst meal during the transition. The second day of every meal went better as the cooks and tray line employees started to get into a groove. I was able to sit in on a few meetings this week as well. The hospital has a LEAN initiative which is trying to promote interdepartmental communication and moral. That was a very interesting meeting to sit in on. They were discussing their visual board. I sat in on one disciplinary meeting as well. That was not fun, but it was interesting to see how the department deals with disciplining staff.  The last major meeting that I was able to sit in on was a manager meeting. In that meeting they just discussed business and how things were going in general, as well as, trouble shooting. I was able to do quite a few hands-on activities. My favorite being learning how to cut a filet from a tenderloin. Dennis gave me the last of the five tenderloins to trim and cut into 16 4-6oz. portions. So, I was nervous about cutting it (I let Dennis cut the actual pieces of meat, but I trimmed the steak). I loved my time at NHRMC with Chef Dennis! Now I am off to the next part of my food service rotation at Davis Health Center. Wish me luck!