Dietician Sunaina Khetarpal is one of the best dieticians in Gurgaon, with 11 years of experience. She is working as Chief Nutritionist in Fortis Escorts Hospital Gurgaon & Kalyani Hospital Gurgaon. Nutritionist Sunaina provides diet consultations and personalized diet plans and diet charts for services like Weight Loss Program, Weight Gain Program, Cholesterol Management Program, Diabetes Management Program, Therapeutic Programs in Specific Disorder and other disease management. Email, Phone and online diet consultation is also provided.
My Journey As A Dietitian
Two Roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference. These lines by Robert Frost always reverberate my mind as I retrospect and think about my Journey / Odyssey as a dietician.
My professional journey started in Gurgaon (now called Apna Gurugram) way back in 2003. Frankly speaking, the last 15 years were full of hard work, dedication, learning, challenges & patience and I believe all these things have actually made it interesting throughout. Gurugram, now, may have been considered as the land of opportunities by many but there was a faint scope for a dietician almost a decade ago. At that time, there were not many hospitals in the city and among the ones which were available, hardly; any of them had a dietary department. Dietician portfolio was kind of unacknowledged and was of out of the list of “Necessities”.
At that time, I took that challenge to make a breakthrough in this field and establish not only myself but also influence the thought process of decisive authorities in the field of healthcare. I chose to work with one of the hospitals in 2003 at a very low salary for a half a day job profile. I was an enthusiastic fresher who wanted to explore and learn more about nutrition. I got the privilege to meet and work with many senior doctors. Within a few months a comfort zone got created around me following Routine activities at IPD and Kitchen.
I was very clear in my mind that if I have to achieve my dream of becoming a known “Dietician” and add acknowledged value to society then I need to either break this comfort zone or expand it horizontally and vertically.
At that time, someone introduced me to an NGO. I joined them as a consultant. Though there was no monetary benefit attached to it gave me a lot of emotional satisfaction. It gave me a great networking platform. Parallel, I started exploring more opportunities and as they say “Where there is a will, there is a way”. These are very simple lines but trust me these lines have worked like a wonder for me. Then, I received a call from “Kalyani Hospital” to join them and I opted for it. That was the major turning point of my life.
Dieticians were looked upon as “Khane Wale” but generally doctors understand and knew the real contribution of dieticians when it comes to patient health and otherwise also. Journey at Kalyani was also not easy and my dedication, quality of work, doctor’s support and guidance of seniors helped me to get the required recognition there. Through Kalyani, I came in touch with many Medical Representatives and started participating in camps.
In 2006, one of the most prestigious things happened in my life when I was blessed with a baby boy. I left my job before the birth of my Son “Raghav” due to complications in pregnancy. At that time, Dietician went to back seat and mother came on the front seat. This break continued for 2.5 years, until 2009 because of various reasons.
“Now the second phase started of becoming a Brand for Self & Others especially leveraging Technology and e-way”
Now I was back to Square one, what to do now? Let me tell you though I was on break for quite a long time but my dream was alive inside me on every single day. I leveraged these 2.5 years to learn the things that were kind of missing in my overall personality. Two major things that were achieved during this time was to get conversant with Computer & its applications and second was to capitalize on the network/connections established from 2003 to 2006.
I started again to build on my career. A couple of patients started consulting me at home, who were referred by some practitioners, consultants, and other network partners. In May’ 2009, got a call from Kalyani to join them again and I accepted the offer. It was almost for 6 months that I was ready to move back to the profession but there was no job, prior to the offer of Kalyani.
During those crucial 6 months, I was very much thoughtful to find out different ways to expand my horizon. Some of the ideas that came to my mind were like to open up own clinic, to collaborate with someone and start fitness studio or to switch over the job to key hospital in Delhi. When I evaluated all thoughts on various parameters of my networking in NCR, my financial position, my client base, family constraints etc… I could easily make out that nothing out of these options will work out for me. Rather than taking these entry barriers as problems I tried to see the opportunity to start something that can overcome these problems. I took help from some of my friends and leveraging my knowledge about computer and internet, I started registering myself with various websites and search engines. This was absolutely a different way of pursuing my own interest and that’s what was making it more interesting for me. Social websites were exploited as marketing tools. My own FB page “Health is Wealth” and a group “Nutrition Talk” are some of the examples. Writing blogs became my regular habit. Slowly, viewers started liking it and they approached me for consultation and also invited me at various seminars. Those were the opportunities that I was waiting for.
While continuing this path in 2013, this online stuff matured into a disruptive idea of opening an e-clinic. Of course, there are pros and cons attached to it but being optimistic I opt to move forward with this idea. I had a word with a concerned person and he gave me an overview of e-clinic.
In the beginning, the patient’s flow was very less. People used to visit the website but were not converting into the organic clients. People had various doubts in their mind like how someone can manage the weight without even meeting the person. Patience is the keyword. And my friends, finally e-clinic really worked for me. With this and advancements in technology, people became more aware and started developing trust in e-ways. It gave me immense benefits in terms of connecting with people and multiple organizations, knowledge and becoming a Brand online.
Soon I became a brand. In 2013, I was approached by Delhi Aajtak to do 3 back to back episodes of “FIT DELHI”.
- In May 2015 I was invited by Doordarshan to do a program for Women “Images”. It was an overwhelming experience to see myself on a platform or seat where many famous personalities have been interviewed.
- I was invited to judge Hindustan Times and Starplus Anokhi Masterchef. It was a great experience. My work has been published in many leading newspapers.
- In 2015 I shot my first advertisement for Nutricharge and became their brand ambassador.
- I shared my space in all the leading newspapers national and regional with Mr. Amitabh Bacchan and Sania Mirza in 2016. It was an amazing experience.
I think I must stop here otherwise we can go along talking about my journey, experience & passion for hours and hours. In nutshell, Building Self and becoming a brand leveraging technology is not an easy and fast journey. It’s a ladder which we can climb step by step, so-called a gradual growth. Of course, it is important that we must climb the ladder as fast as possible but it’s more important my dear friends that ladder must lean against the right wall so that we cover the whole journey of climbing, we achieve that value and brand matching with your aim and aspirations.
First of all invest time on yourself, your knowledge, your networking and prove your worth as a dietician. Once you are confident of your excellence start building your brand and here I would strongly recommend counting on technology and e-platforms as per my own experience.
Finally, I Would Like To Conclude Here With:
- You and only You can make a difference, the whole world is available at your disposal
- Upgrade yourself to match with the environment – apple launch new phones every 3 months, we should not die before we DIE
- Knowledge is just a click away now, leverage it – Thanks to Google
- Invest in building a society and building relations – in turn, they will invest in building you
- Strive not to be a success but rather to be of value
Thank you once again… Let us build Society, Nation and Ourselves…
