What does a Dietitian do?
A dietitian's role is to assist clients in their journey to achieve their health goals. Typically, a dietitian's responsibilities revolve around interviewing and assessing a client's diet needs and goals, learning their preferences and restrictions such as allergies, and crafting a personalized nutrition plan. Moreover, it is essential for a dietitian to monitor a client's progress and maintain information on all accounts. There are also instances where one may promote healthy eating habits to the public, all while keeping abreast of the latest nutrition studies.
Dietitian responsibilities
Here are examples of responsibilities from real dietitian resumes:
- Manage the anemia status of patients by reviewing necessary lab data and initiating or adjusting medication doses.
- Prioritize initial/quarterly/consult assessments, interventions and progress monitoring for long-term care, rehabilitation and post acute patients.
- Design and provide individualize nutrition counseling to promote healthy behavior modifications for a variety of home health care patients.
- Counsele post-op patients to ensure dietary compliance, nutritional adequacy and formulation of weight management goals throughout their post-operative course.
- Perform indirect calorimetry to measure resting metabolic rates (RMR).
- Work as part of research team on a large-scale NIH clinical trial.
- Develop and teach diabetes management nutrition classes to study participants in an NIH fund grant.
- Work with athletics department and students with food allergies and make menu modifications to fit their needs.
- Attend meetings with individuals, student groups, and community groups to speak about nutrition, allergies and special diets.
- Provide nutritional assessments for patients on telemetry and medical/surgical units.
- Do initial and follow-up nutritional assessment of outpatient pediatric GI patients.
- Collaborate with GI fellows to deliver optimal nutrition education to patients.
- Participate in CQI meetings and establish and monitor parameters for department.
- Ensure the accurate calculation of nutritional needs base upon individual therapeutic need.
- Learned management operational skills, food service dietetic skills and practice culinary skills.
Dietitian skills and personality traits
We calculated that 39% of Dietitians are proficient in Patients, Medical Nutrition Therapy, and Rehabilitation. They’re also known for soft skills such as Analytical skills, Compassion, and Listening skills.
We break down the percentage of Dietitians that have these skills listed on their resume here:
- Patients, 39%
Provided Medical Nutrition Therapy and nutrition counseling to patients with various medical conditions while overseeing Registered Dietitian Staff and Office Coordinator.
- Medical Nutrition Therapy, 9%
Mentor dietetic interns; Therapeutic medical nutrition therapy sessions; Perform comprehensive nutrition assessments; Dynamic nutritional bulletin board displays
- Rehabilitation, 6%
Provided coverage for dietitians on pediatric pulmonary, gastrointestinal, cardiology oncology, and physical rehabilitation services.
- Patient Education, 6%
Provided inpatient and outpatient education on various complicated and uncomplicated medical disease states and nutritional risk's.
- Nutrition Services, 5%
Provide nutrition services to an adult inpatient psychiatric unit and a geriatric inpatient psychiatric unit.
- Lab Results, 4%
Collaborate regularly with physicians to provide recommendations regarding assigned patients' lab results, such as mineral and bone management.
"patients," "medical nutrition therapy," and "rehabilitation" are among the most common skills that dietitians use at work. You can find even more dietitian responsibilities below, including:
Analytical skills. The most essential soft skill for a dietitian to carry out their responsibilities is analytical skills. This skill is important for the role because "dietitians and nutritionists must keep up with food and nutrition research." Additionally, a dietitian resume shows how their duties depend on analytical skills: "analyzed enteral nutrition sales to determine if the products were appropriate for individual patient needs and financial profitability. "
Compassion. Many dietitian duties rely on compassion. "dietitians and nutritionists must be caring and empathetic when helping clients address health and dietary issues and any related emotions.," so a dietitian will need this skill often in their role. This resume example is just one of many ways dietitian responsibilities rely on compassion: "exhibited patience and compassion to counsel clients from diverse backgrounds with a wide variety of nutritional issues. "
Listening skills. This is an important skill for dietitians to perform their duties. For an example of how dietitian responsibilities depend on this skill, consider that "dietitians and nutritionists must listen carefully to understand clients’ goals and concerns." This excerpt from a resume also shows how vital it is to everyday roles and responsibilities of a dietitian: "listened to any necessary diet changes after observations, especially for patients with diabetes, decreased appetites, or fluid restrictions. ".
Organizational skills. For certain dietitian responsibilities to be completed, the job requires competence in "organizational skills." The day-to-day duties of a dietitian rely on this skill, as "dietitians and nutritionists must prepare and maintain many types of records for multiple clients." For example, this snippet was taken directly from a resume about how this skill applies to what dietitians do: "contributed to organizational goals by participating in patient care conferences, quality improvement teams, staff meeting and in-service events. "
Problem-solving skills. Another crucial skill for a dietitian to carry out their responsibilities is "problem-solving skills." A big part of what dietitians relies on this skill, since "dietitians and nutritionists must evaluate the health status of clients and determine appropriate food choices to improve overall health or manage disease." How this skill relates to dietitian duties can be seen in an example from a dietitian resume snippet: "calculate tpn and tube feeding solutions"
Speaking skills. Another skill commonly found on dietitian job descriptions is "speaking skills." It can come up quite often in dietitian duties, since "dietitians and nutritionists must explain complicated topics in a way that people can understand." Here's an example from a resume of how this skill fits into day-to-day dietitian responsibilities: "performed a monthly quality assurance project on appropriateness and timeliness of total parenteral nutrition as addressed in registered dietitian's notes. "
The three companies that hire the most dietitians are:
- CCompass Group USA428 dietitians jobs
- FFresenius Medical Care North America Holdings Limited Partnership84 dietitians jobs
- FFresenius Medical Care Windsor, LLC72 dietitians jobs
Choose from 10+ customizable dietitian resume templates
Build a professional dietitian resume in minutes. Our AI resume writing assistant will guide you through every step of the process, and you can choose from 10+ resume templates to create your dietitian resume.
Compare different dietitians
Dietitian vs. Food adviser
Nutrition specialists are skilled professionals who possess detailed knowledge of foods that are necessary for human health and growth. These specialists are required to provide comprehensive nutrition services to patients who are admitted to community health centers and specialty clinics for medical nutrition therapy. They must create diets and meal plans for patients based on their medical and dietary needs. Nutrition specialists must also organize community outreach efforts and other funded nutrition programs to encourage participation from professionals and lay groups.
These skill sets are where the common ground ends though. The responsibilities of a dietitian are more likely to require skills like "patients," "medical nutrition therapy," "rehabilitation," and "patient education." On the other hand, a job as a food adviser requires skills like "facility operations," "logistics," "food service," and "food preparation." As you can see, what employees do in each career varies considerably.
Food advisers tend to reach lower levels of education than dietitians. In fact, food advisers are 13.7% less likely to graduate with a Master's Degree and 1.0% more likely to have a Doctoral Degree.Dietitian vs. Food and nutrition teacher
Nutrition interns are individuals who are on the job training for the tasks performed by licensed nutritionists or dieticians. The interns provide a nutrition care process that includes prescription of parenteral and enteral recommendations and analysis of laboratory values. They prepare a case study presentation that applies evidence-based guidelines and nutrition care process research. It is also part of their responsibilities to provide nutrition services, meal plans, and lesson plans.
In addition to the difference in salary, there are some other key differences worth noting. For example, dietitian responsibilities are more likely to require skills like "medical nutrition therapy," "rehabilitation," "patient education," and "lab results." Meanwhile, a food and nutrition teacher has duties that require skills in areas such as "dishes," "cash handling," "food handling," and "tray line." These differences highlight just how different the day-to-day in each role looks.
Food and nutrition teachers earn lower levels of education than dietitians in general. They're 17.9% less likely to graduate with a Master's Degree and 1.0% less likely to earn a Doctoral Degree.Dietitian vs. Nutrition specialist
The required skills of the two careers differ considerably. For example, dietitians are more likely to have skills like "rehabilitation," "patient education," "lab results," and "regulatory agency compliance." But a nutrition specialist is more likely to have skills like "pet," "nutritional care," "patient care," and "nutrition education."
Nutrition specialists earn the highest salary when working in the health care industry, where they receive an average salary of $58,810. Comparatively, dietitians have the highest earning potential in the health care industry, with an average salary of $56,899.Most nutrition specialists achieve a lower degree level compared to dietitians. For example, they're 11.8% less likely to graduate with a Master's Degree, and 0.7% less likely to earn a Doctoral Degree.Dietitian vs. Nutrition internship
Types of dietitian
Updated January 8, 2025
