22 November 2021
One minute with… Emily Sycamore, Clinical Dietitian (Matanga Matai Kai) What does your job involve?
What do you like about it?
I work with the Canterbury DHB Adult Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Service seeing both inpatients and outpatients, and I also work across the adult general surgical wards. My role involves providing nutritional support and education on eating and drinking, tube feeding, or parenteral nutrition (providing nutrition intravenously).
I love getting to know patients across the longer term and working as part of a great team. It’s a challenging area with so much continuous learning to keep up-to-date with.
With the CF patients, it’s about working with them to keep them nutritionally well to optimise their lung function. Some CF patients can have incredibly high nutritional requirements due to fighting frequent chest infections, not being able to digest and absorb nutrients as well, and the increased work of breathing (think trying to eat at least one and a half to two times what you usually would in the day, and that might just be a starting point for some). Why did you choose to work in this field? I didn’t know what to do after my undergraduate nutrition degree but always wanted to work in healthcare, so I applied for dietetics on a whim without really knowing what a dietitian did back then. From memory we received one lecture during training on nutrition and CF – as it’s such a specialised area. So, I’d say the area of cystic fibrosis found me after I fell into it as a new graduate a few years ago and haven’t left. I moved to Christchurch from the windy capital at the start of the year for my role.
What are the challenging bits? Trying to convince people that dietitians are human too and aren’t the food police! But generally, it’s challenging the massive amount of nutrition misinformation on the internet with everyone having access to ‘Dr Google’ these days. Who inspires you and why? Many people, but more so female athletes who speak up against society’s expectations of how you should act, look and exercise/train as a woman. What do Canterbury DHB’s values (Care and respect for others, Integrity in all we do and Responsibility for outcomes) mean to you in your role? They’re values that I try to practice daily whether I’m at work or not. I value providing the best nutrition care I can to patients. Something you won’t find on my LinkedIn profile is… A lot! I have one but it’s not the most up-to-date.
If you could be anywhere in the world right now it would be… I’d love to keep it close to home and be able to get to the family bach in the Coromandel currently, but I’d go anywhere my sister in Aussie and family in Auckland could all be together. What do you do on a typical Sunday? It probably involves some form of coffee in the morning and catching up with friends/family, maybe with a walk chucked in there as a break from CrossFit. Lately, I’ve been spending time with my grandparents, it’s lovely to be closer to them since moving to Christchurch. What’s your favourite food? So tricky to ask a dietitian this! I love all types of food, but my weakness is probably skinny-dipped almonds and peanut butter. I was well known in my previous office for having a stash of multiple flavours of each in my desk drawer! And your favourite music? Tricky… my Spotify is a massive jumble of everything from the ‘60s to the latest!
If you would like to take part in the column or would like to nominate someone please contact Naomi.Gilling@ cdhb.health.nz
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