VA Hospital in Albuquerque
My 6-week (200 hours) Foodservice Management Rotation was with the VA Hospital in Albuquerque.
My experience in VA food service was interesting, varied, and fun. I learned so much about foodservice management in the context of purchasing, procurement, and budgeting of equipment and food products, developing and evaluating recipes using Computrition, managing human resources, conducting quality improvement services and food handling safety inspections, and finally learning how to manage a hospital kitchen on a day-to-day basis. I enjoyed spending time behind the scenes to see how hospital food service is really done. Below, you’ll see just a few of the projects I worked on in the kitchen, from writing a workable business plan to creating a menu for Veteran’s Day to celebrate our nations patriots.
Foodservice Management Highlights
I created a business plan to help optimize the nutritional status of malnourished patients at the VA and improve patient outcomes, avoid malnutrition-related readmissions, decrease healthcare costs, and reduce length of stay.
Please see my business plan below:
To honor our inpatient heroes for their service, I created a special Veteran’s Day Holiday Menu featuring ribeye steak, red skin mashed potatoes, chocolate bunt cake, and a vegetable medley.
Please see my menu below that includes modified diets:
I provided educational in-service presentations to kitchen staff, dietitians, nursing, and speech pathologists on the new International Dysphagia Diet Standardization Initiative (IDDSI). The goal was to introduce the new standards and present how they compare to the National Dysphagia Diet (NDD) currently being used, as well as what to expect in the future during the transition.
Please see my presentation below as well as the marketing flyer used to announce the event:
I provided food safety and sanitation in-service presentations to kitchen staff to review the standard operating procedures for handwashing and warewashing. This in-service was particularly important because not only is it an annually mandated training, but it is also mandatory to have for Joint Commission, as the VA was up for an inspection during this time.
Please see my presentation below as well as the marketing flyer used to announce the event below:
Hannah Contrucci, MS, RDN, LD 