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The dietary department at the Lebanese American University Medical Center-Rizk Hospital (LAU Medical Center-RH) houses the Nutrition & Dietetics and the Foodservice division. It resonates with the medical center’s mission by committing to patient-focused nutrition care and foodservice delivery, par excellence. Both units work concomitantly in optimizing nutrition care and services through evolving the practice of clinical, community, and foodservice dietetics as well as educating future dietitians and other healthcare providers while upholding the tradition of interprofessional education (IPE). Patients are entitled to healthy, delicious, safe and nutritious food options available as per tolerance and preference.

The Foodservice division’s clientele includes but is not limited to visitors, staff, executives, patients, students, residents, and fellows. It manages unique retail food operations while ensuring that the organoleptic quality, safety, and security are of high caliber, through:

• Overseeing the service flow, from procurement to production and service, in accordance with the hazard analysis of critical control point’s system guidelines.
• Orchestrating menu development, food production, patient, and customer service while managing its financial operations and addressing food safety and sanitary procedures through proper monitoring and evaluation.
• Supervising the deliverables of the chefs, food attendants, transporters, and stewards at the kitchen. As well as leading the staff members at the food storage warehouses, the cashiers and counter attendants at the cafeteria.

The Nutrition & Dietetics division aids the medical center’s community on their dietary needs, through, their dietetic professionals, including clinical dietitians, a diet aid, nutrition students along with preceptors. We all work collectively through:

• Intervening with inpatients, through acute and critical care, as well as outpatients, through ambulatory care while abiding by the nutrition care process model.
• Empowering clients to address their nutritional challenges and intervene with their nutrition problem(s) via a myriad of medical nutrition therapy interventions.
• Serving as members of the interprofessional healthcare teams at the inpatient wards, apart from the routine visits to the one-day chemotherapy and hemodialysis ambulatory units.
• Providing evidence-based practice nutrition care through assessing patient’s nutritional status, diagnosing the nutritional problem, selecting the appropriate plan of the nutrition intervention, monitoring patient’s progress, and evaluating the effectiveness of the intervention while working in tandem with inpatient’s primary physician, among other practitioners.
• Operating in the educational advancement of other healthcare team members, as part of its IPE culture, by acting as moderators to meetings and providing educational sessions on the adequate use and the importance of nutrition care provisions to beneficiaries of the medical center.
• Preparing and implementing awareness sessions, health fairs, and promotion programs on various topics, depending on the event, such as world food safety day, world diabetes day, world cancer day, among others.
• Revising, amending, and implementing policies and procedures related to nutrition care and foodservice activities in line with current and novel guidelines that arise that foster service and care advancement and innovation.
• Supporting clinical and translational research projects pertinent to nutrition care on non-communicable diseases, among others.
• Housing the supervised dietetic practicum of the Nutrition and Dietetics Coordinated Program in collaboration with the Lebanese American University (LAU) School of Arts and Sciences, Department of Natural Science. The program focuses on hands-on experiential learning, and equips its students with conducting nutrition focused physical exams to better prepare them for the objective structured clinical exam. Program competencies are set by the Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics, the accrediting agency for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Upon completion of their practice, students become well-prepared to sit for the nutrition colloquium exam, administered by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, to issue their Licensure in Dietetics from the Ministry of Public Health. For more information about the program, please visit https://soas.lau.edu.lb/academics/programs/bs-nutrition-dietetics-coordinated-program.php.