How to Be a Virtual Private Practice Dietitian Without Setting Up Your Own Business
Stacey Dunn-Emke with NutritionJobs
Meet my dietitian friend , Adrien Paczosa, RD, LD, CEDRD-S, of the telehealth nutrition counseling company, Nourish.
Adrien Paczosa with Nourish
I got involved in private practice almost 17 years ago.
Stacey Dunn-Emke
Tell us about your new venture as a dietitian and how you are building a new company, Nourish.
Adrien Paczosa with Nourish
Nourish is a fully virtual telenutrition company that has almost 70 registered dietitians in 38 different states. We have big goals to keep growing. All of our dietitians are w2 employees. With Nourish, we want to provide an employment environment that provides a community of fellow dietitians.
We have full-time dietitians and part-time dietitians, but truly when it comes down to it, we are a true community of dietitians, collaborating, learning from each other.
Stacey Dunn-Emke
I think the beauty of Nourish is that you can embrace your job working with patients without setting up a business. Can you speak more to that?
Adrien Paczosa with Nourish
With Nourish we also provide our dietitians both education and support. Because running a private practice on your own is lonely, and it's hard. The best part is that the dietitians employed with Nourish don’t need to worry about any of the backend stuff that comes with running a private practice. Nourish has an amazing customer experience team, a marketing team, an engineering team, a billing team to take care of the insurance paperwork, and an onboarding team to take care of bringing in new patients. A Nourish dietitian just needs to come to [virtual] work and be a dietitian. We are flooded with patients and you get to say how many patients you want to work with, you set the cadence and you still have complete autonomy. At Nourish, we have more patients that we have available appointments with a dietitian right now, so the need for our services as dietitians is truly available. And it's just so exciting to be able to meet patients.
Stacey Dunn-Emke with NutritionJobs
Wow! I want to work for your company! But this is a good time to say that this interview is not sponsored by Nourish.
I just want to share what Adrian is doing with Nourish and bring it to fellow dietitians who want to work as a telehealth private practice dietitian without having to set up their own business.
Who is your ideal candidate for this position?
Adrien Paczosa with Nourish
The ideal candidate for this position is someone that has 2-3 years of experience with outpatient nutrition counseling.
Stacey Dunn-Emke
What tips can you give dietitians applying for a job with Nourish to help them stand out and what types of job interview questions can candidates expect and prepare for?
Adrien Paczosa with Nourish
There are a few rounds in the interview process. The first interview is to get to know you and the second interview is learning about your clinical skills.
That first interview with Nourish will be with our recruiting department where you'll get to learn more about Nourish and we can learn about you. Come prepared with questions. For example, “what is it like to work at Nourish?”
That second interview is with our clinical team and that's where we can understand your nutrition counseling skills:
What is it like for a patient to come and see you?
There might be some role playing with somebody on our clinical team
We want to learn how you work together with patients
What is your approach to care?
What are your PES statements and your charting
How you approach a patient
So my biggest advice is don't skim and treat our interview questions like you are truly charting and show off your amazing counseling dietetic skills. Have a rockstar PES statement. We like the candidates that really put forth effort and take it seriously. We love that.
Stacey Dunn-Emke
You can search for jobs with Nourish on NutritionJobs.com and UseNourish.com.
