Transcription:
Getting To Know Our Providers - Ashlyn Housewright

Ashlyn Housewright, MHA, RDN, CDCES, CLS: My name's Ashlyn Housewright and I am the Executive Director of Community Health and Wellness. I am also a Registered Dietician and a Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist. I work in the Health and Wellness Center at Memorial Hospital. And I've been with the organization for over four years now.

So my mom worked in healthcare. She worked in healthcare, in the same area for over 40 years, so I knew at a pretty young age that I wanted to work in healthcare. I originally thought that I wanted to be a nurse practitioner, so I started my schooling journey after high school to become a nurse and just realized that nursing probably wasn't for me at the time. So my mom and I tossed around some different ideas and she was like, you know what? You've always liked nutrition, cooking, experimenting with different foods. And she was like, have you ever thought about becoming a dietician? And I didn't know what a dietician was. And she had said, oh yeah, we have several at the hospital where she was working.

And so I just read more about the field and I thought, you know what? This is something I could really see myself doing. I love the health and wellness world and working individually and also dieticians have that provider side because they get to work one-on-one with patients and clients and really have an impact.

So, thankfully, nursing credits and dietician credits for the initial start of programs are very similar, so I was able to transfer and I became a Registered Dietician and I've been a Registered Dietician for over 10 years now. My undergraduate degree is from Western Illinois University. To be a registered dietician, after you have a bachelor's degree, you do have to go on to complete an accredited internship, and that's a selection process that you go through.

And I completed my internship at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, Kansas. And that was a phenomenal experience. I moved back to the central Illinois area, worked for Quincy Medical Group for about seven years before I came to Memorial.

Registered Dieticians are really the professional when it comes to providing nutrition guidance. And nutrition plays such a vital role for everyone, whether we are healthy or whether maybe we're specific, facing a specific disease, nutrition is there and I think that's what's so awesome about the field I work in is everyone can relate to nutrition, or could be working on it in some facet and they might not even know about it. Nutrition is becoming maybe more popular now, but is always been viewed in my mind as medicine. We have to eat every day. So we think about food and I always have the mindset of food should be fun and we can make it fun.

And so I just love that side of nutrition that, you know, it can speak to everyone. And dieticians play a role in prescribing nutrition plans and staying up to date on emerging trends and research. And so I think that's one thing that I just love about nutrition. I love the stages of life too, through nutrition. When we think about even conception to a small child, I mean, nutrition is in every single one of those processes. As we get into becoming children and teenage years and then adults, you know, nutrition is there and it just, it can have such a huge role. And I don't think everyone always thinks about the role that nutrition plays that, you know, for our body to work every day.

And I think that's one really cool piece about what I do is getting to see nutrition in action. I think it's important to know that everyone is different and our needs are different. And so not one size fits all approach works for every patient or client that I'm working with. So I really do try to individualize the process and work with the patient or client to come up with something that works for them and that's obtainable.

Like I said, I'm a firm believer in food should be fun. And I think sometimes we have this diet culture mentality that it shouldn't be fun or it isn't fun or we always have to think about what we have to take away. And I always tell those that I'm working with that I always want to focus on what we can add in just to improve health and wellness. So really, my philosophy, even though I love that food is medicine approach, I, understand that it, it really needs to be individualized and at the time we're setting you know, a small goal plan that works with the individual I'm working with. So very individualized is how I would describe how I work with patients and clients. A lot of times, I become their biggest advocate or cheerleader or coach, depending on what they're working on.

So I'm, I'm right alongside with them because sometimes the individual is just looking for accountability and that's found within me when working with them. So I would say individualized, very patient driven, and focused. And just listening to the needs of the individual I'm working with. I have three boys at home. Our boys are five, three and two. So my husband and I are just very active. You know, I always say my best job starts when I get off at work at the end of the day cause I go home to round two of raising kids. We love to be outside, outdoors. But you know, my husband is an avid hunter. We love fishing. We love side by side rides. We love walks. I mean, if we can be outside, we're outside, whether it's hot or cold. I love cooking. So that's one thing that I just love to do with my kids is just get them involved in the kitchen with me.

Whether it's just a quick, you know, easy meal that we're making on a busy night or on the weekends if we're baking something together. That's really what brings me a lot of joy. I'm a huge, reader. My life is very busy right now, so I don't get to actually read as much, but I use books on tape or audible. You can always find me like listening to like a podcast or a book to better my profession or personal life. Like to travel, I love real estate. That's something my husband and I kind of do on the side. So I mean, just busy stuff.

So interesting, about me, just how I kind of ended up here. Like I said, I was working in Quincy at the time, and a dietician was needed at Memorial to consult here a couple days a week I lived in Carthage and was making the drive back and forth to Quincy. And so when the opportunity came up, I thought, oh, this would work great for my personal life.

I really took the job or the consulting opportunity for my personal life. So I was going to commute to Quincy two days a week and then work in Carthage two days a week. And I thought it was really going to just be a dream. Memorial was so much more than just convenience for me. I saw so much opportunity when I started to work here to impact the health and wellness of my community.

There was opportunity for dietician services. There was opportunity for community engagement. There was opportunities for employee wellness. There was opportunities to serve our inpatients better, get involved in our schools and with our kids. Then Memorial became so much more for me than just a spot that was convenient for my family.

And the position just really grew into a full-time opportunity. So I decided to leave where I was working and come on board at Memorial to fulfill a passion that became of mine. So Memorial is more than just a five minute drive for me to work every day. It is a huge opportunity to work with an amazing team.

We have an outstanding CEO who believes in the mission and vision of this organization and wants the best for the communities that we serve here. And so I, I couldn't miss out on the opportunity to, to be a part of that.