GI Nutrition Retreat: Training for Fellows and Advanced Practice Providers

In 2018, Wednesday Sevilla, MD, MPH, CNSC, assistant professor of pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, received a grant from the Office of Faculty Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine for an educational innovation project.

Dr. Sevilla and colleagues’ program is an immersive and intensive nutrition education course designed to meet the nutrition knowledge objectives for pediatric gastroenterology fellows. “We also have included our advanced practice providers in our curriculum planning,” says Dr. Sevilla. The new educational course, dubbed the Nutrition Retreat, is the first time the Division is holding an intensive training course specifically for fellows and advanced practice providers.

“The curriculum development and implementation team is composed of pediatric gastroenterologists, dietitians, nurse practitioners, and specialty care nurses. This broad, multidisciplinary group of educators will ensure that participants in the program receive nutrition education from the perspectives of the different professionals they will be working with, which will allow development of a perspective that is cognizant of how nutrition concepts and skills are utilized in the clinical spectrum,” says Dr. Sevilla.

The overarching goal of the Nutrition Retreat is to improve nutrition care provision in the busy ambulatory setting. To accomplish this, the Nutrition Retreat is designed to teach fellows and practitioners the basics of providing individualized nutrition care to a complex patient population, as well as to build a tool kit to access specialized nutrition care for patients.