Chloé McMurray and Lisa Corrigan describe how volunteering with the BDA Critical Care Specialist Group (CCSG) as Social Media Officers is helping the group to reach new audiences.
Chloé (left) is a Senior Dietitian - HPB & Critical Care at North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust and Lisa (right) is an Advanced Dietetic Practitioner - Critical Care at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.
How did you get started volunteering with the BDA?
Chloé: I started volunteering with the BDA as I wanted to do something new, and also give back to the dietetic profession. When the role of Social Media Officer presented itself, I knew that this would be the role for me, as I love being creative and designing things on Canva.
Lisa: I decided to get involved with the CCSG as I wanted a new challenge and to raise the profile of critical care nutrition. I enjoy interacting with people on social media so the opportunity to do this for the CCSG was exciting.
What do you do in your volunteer role?
Our role as Social Media Officers combines our critical care knowledge and creative design skills to communicate and disseminate information to our members, the public and the critical care community whilst promoting and advocating for critical care dietetics.
We love to interact with our followers on social media and get involved in significant awareness weeks (including Dietitians Week & Intensive Care Awareness Week to name a few). We also help promote study days, share relevant articles and podcasts and support CPD for our members. We were also involved in designing and putting together our digital AGM video this year which was a great success!
What's the best thing about volunteering for the BDA?
It is an extremely rewarding role, great for networking and we have a great teamwork spirit. As well as supporting our members and the CCSG, we have become great friends, and speak to each other almost daily (not just about work or CCSG stuff!)
It is also great to have a team of specialist dietitians from across the UK to develop new ideas for promoting critical care dietetics and engaging our members. We’ve had an exciting year being involved with projects for the CCSG, including the bi-monthly newsletter, promoting the new Introduction to Critical Care BDA Course and both our CCSG and NJ Study Days.
It has been great both professionally and personally – we love getting to shout about critical care dietetics in an engaging and interactive way.
What didn't you know about the BDA before you started volunteering?
Just how much goes on behind the scenes. There is so much work that goes into the committee that we had no idea about, and initially we were just in awe! Everyone who volunteers is so passionate, admirable and committed to Critical Care Dietetics and supporting our members. We also didn’t appreciate how great the networking and social side of things would be.
Would you encourage other members to volunteer for the BDA?
Absolutely! Without volunteering, we wouldn’t have found friends in dietitians that we otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet. It has been great both professionally and personally and we love that we get to shout about critical care dietetics and our profession in a way that is engaging and interactive.
We can’t wait to see what the next year brings. It is a huge honour to represent our speciality and work so closely with our committee members, so if you are considering volunteering our advice would be to do it – you won’t look back!
You can follow the BDA Critical Care Specialist Group on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
