Elmer Beck

Abstract

There is a shortage of educationally qualified dietetic technician personnel in the health care industry. The job opportunities for dietetic technicians exceed the supply. Because of this shortage and the need to deliver high quality nutritional care to individuals and groups, dietitians should function at the highest level of professional competency. To accomplish this goal requires delegating certain routine task functions to the dietetic technician.

The purpose of this research was to determine the degree of change between 1973 to 1977 in the willingness of dietitians to delegate task function to the dietetic technician. The instrument used to collect data in this re search was a questionnaire which was distributed to the 123 hospitals in the sample utilized in the research by Lumsden (1973).

Dietetic technicians as respondents were included in this research in order to find out whether or not they were performing the task functions dietitians claimed were delegated to them. The technicians were asked to indicate task functions they were performing and to answer the question "Do you feel adequately trained to perform these task functions?".

Findings from this research indicated that dietitians who perform both administrative and clinical functions were more willing to delegate task functions than those who per formed only one of these roles. Those who performed only clinical functions were also more willing to delegate task functions than those who performed only administrative functions. The administrative dietitians reported in Lumsden's research (1973) were more willing to delegate task functions than the administrative dietitians responding in this research.

None of the technicians who responded to the questionnaire in this research were graduates from programs approved by the American Dietetic Association. On the whole dietetic technicians felt adequately trained to perform many of the task functions which were included in the questionnaire.

The consensus of opinion gathered from the comment summary of the dietitians responding is that dietetic technicians need more training and experience before more can be delegated to them.

Department

Food Science

School

Graduate School

First Advisor

Kathleen Zolber

Second Advisor

David Abbey

Third Advisor

Irma Vymeister

Fourth Advisor

Kenneth Burke

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Degree Level

M.S.

Year Degree Awarded

1978

Date (Title Page)

6-1978

Language

English

Library of Congress/MESH Subject Headings

Dietetics Food; Service, Hospital -- education

Type

Thesis

Page Count

vi; 90

Digital Format

PDF

Digital Publisher

Loma Linda University Libraries

Usage Rights

This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has granted Loma Linda University a limited, non-exclusive right to make this publication available to the public. The author retains all other copyrights.

Collection

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Collection Website

http://scholarsrepository.llu.edu/etd/

Repository

Loma Linda University. Del E. Webb Memorial Library. University Archives

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