Colleague Spotlight: Kris Kinney

For more than 115 years, Swedish Medical Center has been a Hampden Avenue landmark. The community of Englewood and the surrounding areas have been turning to Swedish not only for exceptional healthcare, but also for career opportunities. The team culture at Swedish is storied and unique: many of our colleagues were born at the hospital or have family history of employment. Below, we'd like to share a little bit about one of our amazing colleagues who is committed to our patients and community.

Kris Kinney RDN, CDCES is Swedish Medical Center’s first certified diabetes care and education specialist. She passed a rigorous training and verification process and now Kris’ expertise and teaching will elevate the level of whole patient care Swedish provides.

The CDCES certification is the highest level of training and recognition for diabetes education and management, requiring more than 1,000 logged education hours focused on nutrition, medication and how the disease can be impacted by comorbidities.

“I covered the neuro ICU and I started noticing all these people are coming in and they didn't know they had pre-diabetes or they didn't know they had diabetes. Many people don’t know diabetes is a major risk factor for having a stroke,” Kris said. During treatment, she and the multidisciplinary care teams would talk about proper nutrition and blood sugar management. Oftentimes that means combatting misinformation, “On one hand social media is good because people can hear people talk about their diabetes, it’s visible. But it's also too easy to follow just anyone’s advice and not be getting good information for what your body needs.”

In the hospital setting, registered dietitian nutritionists are constantly evaluating patients’ labs and common methods of managing diabetes might need to be adjusted. Colleague education is just one of the many ways Kris is putting her new certification to work, “If we see blood sugars that are out of control we can suggest the doctor uses a longer acting insulin or make changes to other medications. Because diabetes can have such a significant impact on the body, physicians are always very glad to get our input.”

Diabetes is a disease that suffers from an interesting problem: a lot of people know just a little bit about it, but with nearly 50 percent of American adults being diabetic or pre-diabetic, broadening the knowledge base, especially among colleagues, can help make a big difference. “From patient care techs and nurses and up the care continuum, everybody is interacting with people with diabetes. We have an obligation to ensure we’re sharing the best information with our patients,” Kris said.

In addition to assisting patients in the hospital and consulting with providers and care teams, Kris developed custom material to supplement the standardized curriculum for and regularly presents Swedish Medical Center’s free community diabetes education classes offered at the hospital.

Kris’ new certification is already inspiring some of her fellow registered dietitians to follow in her footsteps, “I’ve already had a couple coworkers tell me they’re interested in pursuing the training. One of them is already starting to log her hours. We’re excited for the future.”

Now in her 25^th year of service at HealthONE hospitals, Kris says her ability to help people live healthier lives through better nutrition has been a dream come true, “I was that nerd in fourth grade that learned about the four food groups and I was like, ‘I want to do that.’ I said in grade school that I wanted to be a nutritionist and the rest is history. It’s always what I’ve wanted to do.”

Sign up for our next diabetes class: search diabetes on our Classes and Events page.