WHERE ARE THE MALE DIETITIANS? Working in the specialist area of IMD means that I don’t get too involved in student training, so I am often asked to mentor the students instead, two of which, currently, are male student dietitians. This brings the amount of males to six in our 30-plus femaledominated department! Unheard of! Over the past few years, I have noticed a steady trickle of male student dietitians coming through our doors from Coventry University. Kostas, who is one of our current students and the BDA student rep, tells me that in his year of 35 students, there are four males, with similar amounts in other years. When I trained 20 years ago, there was one male dietitian on my course. Times they are a-changing . . . and for the better. I contacted the BDA, who told me that 4% of their approximate 9500 membership is male, so there are only around 400 in the UK. I asked Kostas why he thought there were very few males coming forward to train. He noted that the public perception of dietitians is of food, cooking and home economics and the public don’t realise how much science and maths is involved in the course and the job. Kostas told me that he first got interested in sports nutrition when he was playing football, but after starting the course, he found that he enjoyed the clinical side more and is especially interested in oncology and myth busting! Kostas’s colleague Chris had a different path; his family life was
Louise Robertson Specialist Dietitian
food orientated as his mum was in catering. He enjoyed food tech at school and loved science. So, when researching what he wanted to do, dietetics was suggested to him. He finds it surprising that there are not more males in the profession. Maybe dietetics isn’t being promoted as a career to males. Maybe the public doesn’t understand what dietitians do full stop. Another reason that dietetics could be female dominated is that the first dietitians in the 1920s were nurses with a specialist interest in nutrition. In the past, nursing was also a female-dominated profession, although this has changed more than dietetics has. Put dietitian into an online search engine and you mainly come up with photos of women in white coats holding fruit! I’m loving the new competition that the BDA is hosting – to create new photos that accurately highlight the diversity of the dietetic profession. We need to get our thinking caps on to ensure that there is an equal amount of men as well as women in these photos, which may help to spark more interest in male students who are thinking about what career to get into.
Louise is an experienced NHS dietitian who has been specialising in the fascinating area of Inherited Metabolic Disorders in adults for the last 10 years. In her spare time she enjoys running her blog Dietitian's Life with her colleague and good friend Sarah Howe, playing the cello and keeping up with her two little girls! www. dietitianslife.com
www.NHDmag.com April 2019 - Issue 143
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