James A. Haley Tampa VA Hospital
Our internship is designed to give interns broad and progressive exposure to dietetics across clinical, community, and management settings, with opportunities to tailor experiences through electives and research.
Rotation Summary
- Orientation - 1 week
- Acute Clinical Care - 16 weeks, moving from introductory in settings such as general medicine, long term care, spinal cord injury to advanced care in areas such critical care, oncology, and renal nutrition, and a capstone experience
- Outpatient Care - 9 weeks of counseling, motivational interviewing, chronic disease management, MOVE! weight management, healthy teaching kitchen, and a capstone clinic experience
- Food Service & Management - 5 weeks focused on operations, computrition, and leadership
- Community/Public Health - 4 weeks with WIC, outreach programs, and Home-Based Primary Care
- Electives - 2 weeks in areas rarely offered elsewhere, tailored to individual interests (Women health, Pediatrics, Performance Nutrition, Pain management, Mental health and many more!)
- Research - 2 weeks plus 100 hours of project work, often culminating in presentations or publications
- Vacation - 2 weeks plus Federal holidays
What Makes Our Rotations Unique
- Progressive skill-building through four phases of acute care
- Access to specialized patient populations
- Small class size & dedicated preceptors for individualized mentorship
- Elective flexibility so interns can pursue areas of interest.
- Strong research foundation with opportunities for state, regional, or national presentations
Education Philosophy:
Preceptors guide interns through modeling, discussion of best practices, and constructive feedback, encouraging greater independence as the year progresses. Projects and presentations help interns develop a professional style that translates seamlessly into the workplace.
We use adult education practices, expecting interns to bring curiosity and a strong desire to grow their knowledge and skills. The internship is structured to maximize every learning opportunity, and interns can anticipate a full and rigorous schedule. It is our experience that additional learning in a new setting only expands the professional skillset, therefore credit will not be applied for prior experiences to meet a particular competency.
