Shanna Henderson

Undergraduate: Middle Tennessee State University
Graduate: Mississippi State University
Number of Years In Practice: 5
Current Position: Clinical Dietitian, Baptist Hospital, Graduate Nursing Student, Vanderbilt

When you were at Baptist Hospital on a full-time basis, what were your job duties?

Primarily, pediatric nutrition support in the neonatal intensive care unit. I also covered the antepartum, labor, delivery, and postpartum, surgical ICU, and neuro ICU.

Of all the client/patient encounters you’ve had, which one was the most challenging, yet rewarding, experience?

The most challenging yet rewarding experience was my first neonate patient. The infant was 24 weeks gestational age and weighed 1 lb 3 oz. It was amazing to see the affects of adequate nutrition on growth and development. Nutrition has come a long way in the past 20 years to optimize the outcome of premature and extremely low birth weight infants. The infant was discharged at 36 weeks corrected gestational age and weighed 4 lbs 5 oz.

Congratulations on being accepted into the Vanderbilt nursing program. How do you plan to integrate your dietetic and nursing skills?

I am ecstatic about combining nutrition and nursing! As a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner and Registered Dietitian, I plan to focus on the primary healthcare needs of women ranging from prenatal management to well- woman healthcare and menopause. Nutrition is a vast component of the health issues in women and I intend to center my care on health maintenance, prevention and promotion of wellness with a nutrition emphasis.

Let’s shift our discussion to NDDA. As President, what will be your primary focus for the organization this year?

I would like to see NDDA become more involved in community education. Presently, our PR chair, Amy Cranford and her committee, is composing a position paper for the Metro School System on school nutrition and vending machines. I hope many more of these opportunities will arise for NDDA allowing us as dietitians to get our knowledge out into the community.

Recently, ADA established an “under 30” representative. From your perspective, what special professional needs exist within this age group?

It will be helpful to have a representative at the national level to help guide the “under 30” as they begin to incorporate individual career values and ethics into their practice. Having a representative available for questions regarding professional issues such as portfolio guidelines, reimbursement, and scope of practice will allow more time to research up-to-date nutrition information and become more independent in the field.