James Lumsden

Abstract

Dietetics has been identified as one of the professions in which there is a shortage of qualified personnel. The need to delegate selected task functions to extend professional skills and contain costs has been recognized in many professions faced with a manpower shortage.

This research was done to determine the degree to which dietitians will utilize dietetic technicians in the role proposed by the American Dietetic Association. A questionnaire was the instrument utilized to collect data from the 197 randomly selected hospitals in the continental United States. Task functions identified in the proposed job descriptions for the dietetic technician in food service and the dietetic technician in nutritional care were utilized in the questionnaire for this research.

Findings indicated that there was no significant difference between the percentage of task functions that administrative dietitians were willing to delegate to dietetic technicians in food service management and the number of clinical dietitians who were willing to delegate to dietetic technicians in nutritional care. Dietitians who serve in both administrative and clinical roles at the same time were willing to delegate a significantly higher percentage of their clinical task functions than their administrative task functions.

There were a substantial number of dietitians who were willing to delegate to the dietetic technician but there is also a reservation as to the type of task functions, some of which they feel should remain a function of the dietitian's role, especially for the administrative dietitian. The type of responsibility involved in the task functions which dietitians were not as willing to delegate may indicate that these functions involve a higher level of administrative and decision making skills than the dietetic technician is qualified to assume.

School

Graduate School

First Advisor

Kathleen Zolber

Second Advisor

Peter Strutz

Third Advisor

Shirley Moore

Fourth Advisor

David Abbey

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Degree Level

M.S.

Year Degree Awarded

1975

Date (Title Page)

6-1975

Language

English

Library of Congress/MESH Subject Headings

Dietary Services; Task Performance and Analysis; Personnel Management

Type

Thesis

Page Count

iii; 32

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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