April 26, 2012

Today in class we were supposed to have a guest speaker named Karen.She is the executive director for the Ohio Board of Dietetics. She has also previously worked for the state WIC program. She did not come to class today for reasons unknown, so instead our professor went over what the Ohio Board of Dietetics. This board consists of 5 board members. There are 3 registered dietitians, one licensed dietitian and 1 PhD educator. The board has to always have at least one PhD educator, and in most cases this person is an RD as well. These board meetings are open to the public and are held several times throughout the year. Something that I found to be interesting was that if two board members who are closely located end up meeting in public they consider that to be a board meeting, so those people are not allowed to meet in public to discuss things.
The Ohio Board of Dietetics has many roles. They set the standards of practice for dietitians and they just to make sure these standards are being met. They also issue licenses and permits, they investigate any complaints that are made and if they find evidence for them then they determine the disciplinary action that must be taken. They also make sure dietitians are completing their continuing education and they administer any examinations. Karen's salary and anyone who works for the Ohio Board of Dietetics come from the license fees that dietitians have to pay. A dietitians license has to be renewed every year and they are about $100. Something that I also found interesting was that the state of Ohio has the most specific license laws in the entire United States. Some states are not as strict as to if a person has to have a license or not to be called a nutritionist, or dietitian or a title of the sort. I found this interesting because I figured all states would have similar laws.