School of Food and Agriculture offering hands-on workshop to registered dietitians

A hands-on workshop in nutrition-focused physical examination (NFPE) will be offered on campus in November as an outreach effort by the University of Maine School of Food and Agriculture to registered dietitians in the state.

NFPE is a physical assessment of patients in clinical settings to help identify symptoms of malnutrition, including fat and muscle loss.

The UMaine workshops, Nov. 17–18, will provide training for registered dietitians working in Maine health care settings. The professional development will, in turn, benefit UMaine and graduate-dietetic interns in the Food Science and Human Nutrition program who are supervised and mentored by the registered dietitians.

The training will be led by Mona Therrien, director of UMaine’s Didactic Program in Nutrition and Dietetics, who was trained in NFPE in her doctoral program at Rutgers University. Therrien currently teaches a summer online graduate course in nutritional assessment, which features NFPE.

In the 2017 Academy of Nutrition and Dietetic practice standards, interns must be able to conduct NFPE following 1,200 hours of supervised practice internships. For didactic preparation, Therrien introduces seniors to NFPE in the accredited undergraduate Human Nutrition and Dietetics Program.