dietitian online

I don’t know if anyone’s noticed but I haven’t written any blog posts for over a week because I was scrambling to complete my poster. Biggest lesson learned: START EARLY! Ready or not (and it was almost “not”), I had to present the poster at our Dietetics in Action education day on April 27th.

In case any of the references or information may be helpful to you in your practice, I thought I’d share my poster’s content as Powerpoint slides because they bring together many of the stroke resources I posted about earlier this month. I am still looking at resources and will continue to share them here.

If you’d like to view the poster content, click here: Best Nutrition Practice Across the Stroke Care Continuum: Using PEN and other Evidence-Based Practice Tools. You are free to use or adapt anything you like from the slides as specified in this Creative Commons Licence.

I’m a consciously-incompetent, absolute beginner at designing posters, hence my research into how to do it well.

Yesterday I mentioned serendipitiously finding a photo on Flickr about poster creation. You can read more of the researcher’s practical tips,  view examples and  download templates at the page: Advice on designing scientific posters.

Although I’m making an experience-sharing (versus scientific or research) poster, I’m finding many of the design and content principles apply. I’m modifying section headings to suit my purpose.

For quick reference, here are all the most helpful pages I’ve found so far:

• Advice
• Poster template #1
• Poster template #2

I was looking for images to include in my poster when I came across (serendipity, yet again) this Flickr page on making posters:

Tips for designing scientific posters  

Click here for a larger image you can read.  The author/photographer offers some very smart tips in a humourous way. Well worth checking out.

I am breaking my “blogging fast” (self-imposed so that I will work on my poster presentation) because I will regret if April 20th comes and goes and I don’t write about this:

Dietitians of Canada’s Evidence-Based Decision Making - Online Course

I completed the course December 2006. It was hard work, but well worth the investment of time and money.

Among other things, I learned:

1. How to ask a well-structured question
2. Where to begin searching (surprise: it’s not necessarily Medline)
3. What criteria to use when evaluating studies
4. How to make the most of online learning and compensate for the lack of face-to-face interaction and regularly scheduled classes.

Depending on when you read this (and I hope it will be before midnight on April 20th) you may have time to register for the course.

If you have any questions or would like the longer version of how this course has changed my practice, please me email at:

eaeppler [at] gmail [dot] com. (As usual replace “at” with @ and “dot” with . and leave no spaces.)

I don’t think I’ll be writing too many blog posts for the next couple of weeks because I am working on stroke projects and preparing a poster for an upcoming dietitians’ education and networking event.

Instead, I’ll try to share information and tools I’ve found helpful in completing these tasks. Today, I’ve been referring to web-based resources on preparing posters.

Here is a starter list:

Writing Guides: Poster Sessions
Creating Effective Poster Presentations
Poster Presentation Tips
Poster Presentations

Today, as I prepare for an interdisciplinary stroke team meeting, I have been spending time on The Heart & Stroke Foundation of Ontario’s  Best Practice Guidelines for Stroke Care.

There is a lot of content on this site. It can be hard to know where to begin. Here is a suggested starting point that worked well for me: this Contents page.

From here, you can select the documents of interest to you. For me, today these were: 

Overview of Best Practice Guidelines
Care Guides - these encompass the continuum of care from prehospital through rehab; nutrition is an element of every stage.

Management of patients with stroke: identification and management of dysphagia by the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN).

You can download a quick reference guide and the full guideline from this page (scroll down to guideline #7 or read the full guideline here:
Management of patients with stroke: identification and management of dysphagia

This month — actually beginning this weekend — I will be searching for resources on best nutrition practice in stroke care as I prepare for interdisciplinary team meetings at my workplace.  Here are the first resources I am going to read.

Canadian Best Practice Recommendations for Stroke Care (2006)
Canadian Stroke Strategy Best Practices and Standards Environmental Scan Report

I’ll highlight all the nutrition-related recommendations, guidelines and standards in upcoming posts.

…on this blog that may help you (and me) find resources more quickly. The Dietitian’s Toolkit was getting a bit cluttered so I moved some items to two new categories, Evidence-Based Practice and Practice Guidelines.

Combine the following:

1. April sunshine
2. A small balcony garden needing early spring pruning and repotting
3. A new discovery: You Grow Girl

I can’t resist. No blogging this evening. My hands will be tending plants instead of tapping a keyboard.

Blame it on serendipity once again. Yesterday as I was searching web sites for information on sustainable food choices, I came across what has become my favourite gardening website: You Grow Girl.

I just had to share it as soon as possible so you can be inspired and delighted by this site, too.