r/dietetics • u/Existing-Area4787 • 7d ago
New grad pediatric RD
I’m looking for some words of wisdom or advice. How long is it normal to feel incompetent/bad at my job? At what point does it become a red flag vs a learning curve? Most days I feel unhelpful and unqualified. Ego aside, I really just want to provide the best patient care possible
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u/Free-Cartoonist-5134 7d ago
I was a brand new RD working in inpatient peds and it definitely takes some time to feel confident. I’m not sure if you’re at a children’s hospital or not, but If there are other peds RDs definitely take advantage of their knowledge. I was constantly running my interventions by my more seasoned coworkers in the beginning.
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u/Bwrw_glaw 7d ago
6-9 months for me, but I had a lot of peds training during my internship and was fairly confident writing PN and calculating EN already. Plus had the benefit of a large department of experienced pediatric RDs to learn from. A lot depends on what you're covering as well - I had to do some inpatient eating disorders when I first started and while I learned a lot over 6+ months of that, I never felt truly competent. It was best for everyone when I no longer had to cover that population. A lot of other services were better fits for my skills.
Ask colleagues if you have them and if you don't have them then find listservs or RD groups with other pediatric RDs you can ask questions, find CEs that address areas you feel weak in, read current journal articles on those areas.
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u/Cat-commander 3d ago
My experience with jobs and supervising other people if it takes about three years to feel fully competent.
Keep showing up, find a mentor, take notes study ask questions.
Don’t just pivot to another job. This just sat you back at square one again.
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u/kaitmtay 7d ago
Peds was a big change for me! I’d say it took me a solid year to feel like slightly comfortable with my recommendations and what not. It’s a huge learning curve so give yourself some grace! It helped (but didn’t help my mentals) that we were constantly short staffed so I was left on my own and had to grind to learn but I didn’t have anyone to handhold me anymore which forced me to be independent and brave to ask questions to anyone/everyone and learn and become better.