enough of engineers....

ok, so one of the more irritating parts of this miserable 2 day training was the bit about m.eq.......traditionally....physician orders for renal diets come as milli-equivalents of sodium, potasium and phosphorus....rather in millgirams....as is stated on food labels or in reference texts....and an extraordinary amount of time was dedicated to converting milligrams to milliequalents.....and so i asked the fundemental question...why not turn the milliequalents into milligrams, since that is the only term that our clients have any shot at understanding......and the instructor went into a diabtribe about how it is only the engineers in kidney failure who care about such details.....that is a ridiculous simplification.......that only math-oriented folks can possibly be asked to add up millgrams from either label or reference pamphlets.....and that since physicians still use milliequavalents we should go along with their lead..i suppose i spend so little time with other dietitians that i forget that some are absolutely anal and/ or rigid about some issues......