Jessica Setnick, MS, RD, CEDRD-S, founder of EatingDisorderJobs.com, the International Federation of Eating Disorders and much more. Jessica teaches Eating Disorders Bootcamp and strives to teach health professionals how to properly help those with eating disorders.

What is your current position?
I work for myself and love it. My mission is to educate current and future health professionals how to identify, assess, help and refer individuals with eating disorders in their care. I also hope to change the way the eating disorder field treats individuals with eating issues and work against the stereotypes that prevent people in need from accessing treatment. In this branch of my career, I teach Eating Disorders Boot Camp and have written The Eating Disorders Clinical Pocket Guide, The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Pocket Guide to Eating Disorders and continue to provide private trainings to hospitals and other treatment teams. I provide presentations related to eating disorders to college students, primary care health professionals and eating disorder specialists, particularly dietitians. I also coach dietitians through their challenging patient care and professional situations, and supervise dietitians who are working toward their Eating Disorder Specialist Certification. And I run a non-profit, the International Federation of Eating Disorder Dietitians that brings together eating disorder dietitians and future dietitians for community, collaboration and advocacy.

How did you get started in your career?

My first job was in a children’s hospital that was starting an eating disorder program. I was assigned half-time to the psychiatry service, where the eating disorder program was based, and half-time to the endocrinology service, and eventually moved full-time into the eating disorder program. It was an amazing learning experience, but I left two years later for private practice when I realized that the program was never going to run to the level of excellence I expected. I practiced for 13 wonderful years, during which time I started teaching Eating Disorders Boot Camp and presenting at conferences. I closed my practice to focus my attention on education and training, and worked as a spokesperson for several eating disorder treatment programs. In 2016, I decided it was time to go back to work for myself.

What advice would you give to someone new to the field?
Every job is an opportunity to learn – even if what you learn is you don’t want to work there anymore. In other words, take what you can from each job, nothing is beneath you, but know that when you go out on your own, you don’thave to do things the way others do. Remember the things that infuriate you so you don’t recreate those situations later. Take risks and try not to let your worry of what others think hold you back. Apply for any job that
interests you, even if you don’t have the requested years of experience. Sometimes enthusiasm overrides those requirements. And please, please, please find someone you can talk to about your own issues, history and internal reactions. Whether it’s a professional supervisor, therapist, professional support group, or someone in your personal support system, it’s so crucial to your mental health to have a safe place to vent and explore your personal reactions to what you’re experiencing at work.

You can find more about Jessica at:

Website: https://www.understandingnutrition.com

Instagram: @understandingnutrition

Stefanie Ginsburg, RD, CEDRD is the Owner of UNRESTRICTED NUTRITION Counseling and Consulting LLC and bases her practice on the principles of Intuitive Eating, Health at Every Size and Body Kindness.

What is your current position? 

Owner/Dietitian at UNRESTRICTED NUTRITION Counseling and Consulting, LLC since May 2020. She confidently treats the gamut of eating disorders and specializes in the treatment of ARFID, both for individual clients and also conducts trainings for clinicians so that they can feel more competent treating the newest eating disorder on the block.

How did you get started in your career? 

One of my dietetic internship rotations was at Princeton’s Eating Disorder Program and my preceptor was moving onto a different job when I was beginning my job search and I was able to take her position, despite it being a specialty area of practice.  I spent three years working at Princeton’s ED Program and then went into the Peace Corps and returned to the field of eating disorders upon returning to the US, getting a job at Eating Recovery Center’s Child & Adolescent Program, where I worked for eight years before beginning my private practice.

What advice would you give to someone new to the field? 

Find your specialty and run with it!  Don’t be afraid to take a bunch of jobs to find your niche and then use your innate skill set to hone your place within a dietetics specialty area. You will become competent and confident in everything that you do – just be patient with yourself as the steep learning curve takes place.

For more information on Stefanie and her practice:

Phone: (720)-541-8684

Email: [email protected]

Website:www.unrestrictednutrition.com

Stefanie also has a PDF document available for purchase called ARFID: Further Assessing Your ‘Selective Eating’ Patients/Clients. This document will help hone in on background information that can better prepare you to treatment plan for a restrictive, aversive or avoidant ARFID case. The document can be downloaded here https://rd2rd.com/downloads/avoidant-restrictive-food-intake-disorder-further-assessing-your-selective-eating-patients-clients/

Paula Quatromoni DSc, RD is an Associate Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Boston University and Chair of the Department of Health Sciences. She is also a senior consultant to Walden Behavioral Care, an eating disorder treatment organization in the greater-Boston area.

What is your current position?

I am a tenured Associate Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Boston University and Chair of the Department of Health Sciences. In that role, I am a faculty member, researcher and administrator. I teach Nutritional Epidemiology in our graduate program and an undergraduate summer study abroad course in Italy on the Mediterranean Diet: Food, Culture & Health. I am launching a new course next semester, Eating Disorders Prevention and Treatment. My research program includes population-based epidemiology of diet and chronic diseases, including work on the Framingham Heart Study, community-based child health promotion, and eating disorders prevention and treatment.

My work in eating disorders spans research, education and training, and the provision of clinical services. I am a senior consultant to Walden Behavioral Care, an eating disorder treatment organization in the greater-Boston area. Several of the Walden RDs are alumni of our graduate Nutrition program at Boston University, and Walden offers exceptional training opportunities for our graduate students and dietetic interns to train in eating disorders care across the entire continuum of care from inpatient and residential to PHP and IOP programming. I serve on the senior leadership team helping to guide the Nutrition department forward, providing clinical supervision to the RD team, leading monthly journal club discussions of emerging research that informs evidence-based practice, and conducting research on treatment outcomes.

How did you get started in your career?

In 2004, I had been a Registered Dietitian for 18 years but was relatively new in my faculty position after having finished my doctoral work in 2001. It was then that my work in eating disorders began. I was teaching Medical Nutrition Therapy and was still very much connected to my clinical roots. From this place, I started the sports nutrition consult service at Boston University, serving the needs of Division-1 student-athletes in terms of sports nutrition education and counseling. That partnership uncovered the salient need for eating disorder screening, identification, treatment, referral and prevention. What grew from that was a thriving outpatient practice treating eating disorders in sport. The researcher in me knew I needed to publish this work, and that led to a shift in my scholarly focus when I realized how little the RD’s voice was in the eating disorder literature. We went on to build up the sports nutrition and eating disorder clinical services on our campus over the next 15 years and I have continued to publish on these topics, often with my colleagues in sports psychology.

After an initial brief consultation for Walden in 2015, they asked me to stay on longer-term. I agreed – on one condition – that together, we build an eating disorder treatment program for athletes. Having attended the first Eating Disorders in Sport conference hosted by the Victory Program at McCallum Place in St. Louis, I came away convinced that we needed a program like theirs here in Boston. Together, we built the Walden GOALS Program (https://www.waldeneatingdisorders.com/eating-disorder-treatment-programs/intensive-outpatient/eating-disorder-treatment-athletes/) and before long, we had outcomes to publish showing the positive effects of an athlete-specific ED treatment program.

I am extremely proud of this work and where it has led me in terms of opportunity, visibility for this niche of practice, and its impact on the field, our clients and population health. This work has truly been life-changing.

What advice would you give to someone new to the field?

Be curious and read! Research is the foundation of evidence-based practice. If you learn how to read, think critically, discern and apply research, you are going to be a strong and respected clinician. These are skills learned largely in graduate school. These skills need to be practiced! So read, and read often; discuss research with colleagues; make it part of your commitment to being a lifelong learner. Read books and blogs in the consumer sphere also. Understand the lived experience and the diversity of the lived experience as much as you can. In addition, get as much specialty training as you can through webinars, podcasts, courses, conferences, clinical supervision, etc. Take your first job in an ED treatment center where you have lots of dietitian colleagues and a multidisciplinary treatment team at your side so that you can learn from their wisdom, experience and collaboration. This kind of on-the-job training and supervision is both invaluable and necessary to develop your clinical competence in this challenging niche of practice. Learn to be an effective listener. Your listening (and counseling) skills will endear you to your clients, allow you to build empathy, and cultivate effective and sustainable working relationships with your clients. Above all, practice consistent self-care. This work is demanding and hard but it is also incredibly rewarding.

You can learn more about Paula and the work she does at the links below

Twitter: @terrierpaq