Page 20 - Nutrition Counseling and Education Skills: A Guide for Professionals

attained by passing a national competency examination administered by the CDR. However, individual
licensure must be obtained for practice within each state resulting in a licensed dietitian nutritionist (LDN)
status which requires the RDN credential but also payment of an annual fee at the state level.

As part of the Scope of Practice, the Academy develops standards for evaluating the quality of practice and
performance of RDNs and NDTRs. SOPs and SOPPs are tools for professionals to use in self-evaluation and
to determine the education and skills necessary to advance from a generalist to specialty and advanced levels of
dietetics practice. The SOPs are based on the four steps in the NCP of nutrition assessment, nutrition
diagnosis, nutrition intervention, and nutrition monitoring and evaluation and are related to patient care.20
The SOPPs contain six dimensions of professional performance, including the following: provision of services,
application of research, communication and application of knowledge, utilization and management of
resources, quality in practice, and competency and accountability.

Figure 1-3 ■ Standards of practice and standards of professional performance for registered dietitian nutritionists (competent, proficient,

and expert).
Source: ©Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Reprinted with permission.

Practice-specific SOPs and SOPPs have also been developed in areas such as disordered eating and eating
disorders, integrative and functional medicine, extended care settings, diabetes care, oncology nutrition care,
sports dietetics, and management of food and nutrition systems to name a few.22 Many of these practice-
specific SOPs and SOPPs form the basis of specialty credentials. For example, the Certified Specialist in
Renal (CSR) documents competence in the defined standard of practice in nephrology care at the expert
level.23

Nutrition Care Process

The NCP is a tool created to advance the profession of dietetics and to achieve “strategic goals of promoting
the demand for nutrition professionals and to help them be more competitive in the marketplace.”20 An initial
workgroup created the stepwise process to describing how nutrition professionals provide care to
patients/clients. It was evident that a standardized taxonomy would assist in communicating the results of
nutrition care and a standardized nutrition language would evolve. The NCP provides a method to address
practice-related problems and make decisions about nutrition interventions. The nutrition professional obtains
and interprets data about a possible nutrition-related problem and its causes. The framework aids thinking
and decision making that RDNs use to guide professional practice.

20