Ariel Law
PPC Nutrition Trainee
Ariel Law is currently a graduate student at University of Arizona earning a Master’s in Applied Nutrition. Ariel often enjoys spending time learning and understanding how to embrace different cultures and cuisines by cooking their food, traveling to different countries, vlogging the experience along with listening to different types of music from different cultures. She loves how the concept of food and nutrition embraces all aspects of cultures bringing the world together. Ariel hopes to one day become a pediatric dietitian and bring more awareness to nutrition education for children and families in the medicine field.
Testimonial
I have been so blessed to have the opportunity to be a part of University of Arizona’s PPC program this year. Throughout the school year, I have learned many things ranging from being a good leader in the medical realm to seeing how a registered dietitian can play an impact on the pediatric community as a whole. In this reflection, I would like to highlight a couple memorable experiences that have taught me valuable lessons regarding maternal and child health.
In the beginning of my PPC training, I was granted the privilege to participate in the leadership training seminar teaching us the importance of communicating with others and understanding where people come from. While I remembered this teaching, the concept never really run in my heart until I’ve had a couple memorable experiences including visiting Mexico and working with a couple patients and their families in the cystic fibrosis (CF) clinic.
During my internship, this was my first time visiting Nogales in Mexico. On one hand, I was quite excited to go, but on the other hand, I was a bit nervous. These feelings rung in my heart since I’ve never crossed the border, there were different experiences that my friends and family have shared with me, and the language was quite foreign to me since I’ve never quite picked up Spanish well. Although these were concerns that I’ve had, I was still pretty excited to learn about the culture, the environment, as well as experience the country as a whole. During the trip, I have been blessed with the eye-opening experience to learn so much about the country’s culture, the accessibility to medical resources, as well as the different foods the country had. Reflecting back upon the trip, I’ve learned so much about how different factors can play a role in impacting a person’s health as a whole especially with different opportunities for accessibility to medical resources, different living conditions, as well as environmental conditions such as weather. This taught me the importance of understanding a patient’s condition, decision making thought process, as well as being more mindful of a patient’s culture when working with patient’s and their families.
Other than the trip, I have been able to work with a few patients in the cystic fibrosis clinic that taught me the importance of working together with the patient as well as their family. While interacting with the patients as well as their families, I’ve learned how mothers can play a huge impact on a child’s health. Whether it be raising them, supporting them, or teaching them, it was clear that maternal and child health has a positive correlation. This experience taught me the importance of working together with both the patient and the patient’s family as a team when coming up with feasible plans to set up the patient for success in recovery and maintaining health.
Overall, my experience as a nutrition trainee at PPC has been extremely valuable and it has taught me the importance of advocating for patients and their families, teaching the fundamentals of nutrition to both medical professionals as well as the patients, and also making sure to communicate adequately and respectfully to come up with feasible plans for both the patient and medical professionals when working as a dietitian.