Community Paediatric Lead Dietitian

Job responsibilities

Job Purpose

To lead a small team of community paediatric dietitians providing a clinical dietetic service within Nottingham City.

To undertake the role of lead dietitian for the community paediatric team who provide the dietetic management of children within Nottingham City, supporting the team to provide expertise to service users, including parents and carers and other healthcare professionals in relation to nutrition and dietetics. To act as a source of expertise supporting clinical supervision and continuing professional development within the specialist teams.

To support the Clinical lead Dietitian on strategic projects involving development of clinical dietetic services.

To undertake paediatric clinics, to provide clinical advice and support to community paediatric services, primary care health teams, community child health and other stakeholders across Nottingham City.

To develop, deliver and evaluate training programmes for healthcare professionals and students on clinical nutrition for infants, children, and young people up to the age of 19 years.

Dimensions

To support the clinical lead with mentoring clinical staff and working within the service as appropriate.

To be an expert source of nutritional advice in paediatrics for patients, families, nursing and other health professionals.

Support appropriate patients registered with Nottingham City GP Practices, as defined by inclusion criteria for the service.

To offer a specialist resource to health care professionals working in Nottingham City.

Key Responsibilities

1. Clinical

Interpreting complex information provided from paediatric referrals, interviewing families in clinics, by telephone, video link or face to face clinics in Health Centres across the city, this will include domiciliary settings where appropriate.

To undertaking dietetic assessments-diagnosis to inform cost effective individualised treatment and follow up plans.

Conducting, overseeing, and advising on triage of newly referred paediatric patients.

Providing and receiving highly complex and potentially sensitive information from families and children from diverse social and cultural backgrounds.

Advising on the diagnosis and medical management of nutritionally related conditions in infants particularly food allergy, gastro-oesophageal reflux in liaison with medical staff.

To develop individual patients centered care plans based on nutritional diagnosis including interpretation of biochemistry, anthropometry, clinical condition, growth parameters, medication, diet history, family, and social history.

To actively support the clinical lead dietitian on education and clinical updating of all health professionals including dietetic students.

Communicating therapeutic dietary advice and treatment recommendations to a variety of health and social service professionals and making referrals to these professionals as appropriate.

Attending Multi-Disciplinary team case conferences as required.

Maintaining accurate and comprehensive patient records.

Managing own clinical caseload.

Undertaking data collection e.g. the use of SystmOne and other packages to collect patient data statistics and undertake audit.

Be competent in the use of Information Technology and its application to Dietetics; using Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint effectively, as well as Clinical System Programmes for the accurate review, updates, and documentation of patient care plans.

Regularly undertakes performance management data collection and interpretation of the data in accordance with relevant service outcome measures and key performance indicators.

2. Education and Training

Demonstrate knowledge of national guidelines and strategic direction concerning nutritional and dietetic support.

Empowering front line professionals to provide first line dietary advice to their patients on paediatric-related issues.

Keep up to date with current nutritional knowledge and dietetic practice and take a lead role in updating colleagues as appropriate.

Developing, organising, and delivering evidence-based training, incorporating the provision of relevant educational materials and evaluation.

Support the ongoing professional development of the Dietitians.

Provide clinical supervision and mentoring of dietetic staff and students in collaboration with Clinical Lead Dietitian /Dietetic Service Manager.

Be responsible for managing own professional development and participate in the appraisal process in order to deliver evidence based best practice.

3. Professional Advice and Liaison

Actively participate in multi-disciplinary and multi-agency work and liaise with all key stakeholders as appropriate e.g., GPs, Non-medical prescribers, Medicines Management and 0-19 services.

Undertakes clinical audit and communicates changes to practice, strategic direction and new research-based evidence to colleagues and other healthcare staff.

Effectively engage with individuals and groups to help them understand, accept, and implement dietary changes.

Through the use of negotiation and motivational skills, support the community and health professionals to identify and overcome barriers to change behaviour patterns in regard to diet and nutrition.

4. Competence to Practice

Meet the requirements of the Health and Care Professions Council and maintain professional registration.

Work within the Health and Care Professions Council, British Dietetic Association, and local codes of conduct.

Initiate and or contribute to professional or nutrition-related research, evaluation, and audit.

Commit to continuing professional development, including the undertaking of mandatory and essential training and collection of evidence of competency to practice.

Participate in individual performance reviews.

Complete risk management assessments as required.

Comply with policies, procedures, and statutory regulations.

5. Management

To support the Clinical Lead in the recruitment and selection of clinical staff within the department.

To support the Clinical Lead with the induction, supervision, and individual performance management of clinical and non-clinical staff within the department including 1-2-1s and PRDs.

Qualifications

Essential

• Qualified Dietitian (4 year degree, post-graduate diploma or equivalent).
• Registered dietitian with the Health and Care Professions Council.

Special Requirements

Essential

• Full driving licence and the ability to travel between locations.

Skills and Attributes

Essential

• Knowledge of national targets and reports relevant to food, and nutrition and other relevant guidelines (e.g. NICE guidance, SACN, BDA Paediatric Group and FAISG position statements, Change 4 Life).
• Knowledge of the nutritional requirements of different population groups, with emphasis on infants, children and young people.
• Appreciation of health inequalities in relation to food and food poverty.
• Experience in planning, delivering and evaluating education and training programmes to patients, students and a variety of staff groups.
• Experience of using behavioural change and counselling techniques to promote lifestyle changes with individuals and/or groups
• Experience in project development, implementation, and evaluation.
• Demonstration of good written skills.
• Experience in communicating effectively with staff from a variety of professions on a one to one or group basis; able to do presentations to large groups.
• Experience in communicating complex information in an understandable form to patients and carers on a one to one or group basis.
• Awareness of communication needs of people from differing cultures and with differing physical and learning abilities.
• Experience of using behavioural change and counselling techniques to promote lifestyle changes.
• Ability to react sensitively and professionally to unforeseen clinical and non-clinical situations.
• Ability to work unsupervised.
• Ability to manage own caseload.
• Good time management skills, able to meet deadlines.
• Ability to respond to frequent interruptions e.g. requests for assistance/information from health professionals, patients and the general public.
• Demonstration of commitment to professional and personal development.
• Confident, self-motivated and adaptable.
• Ability to reflect and appraise own and peer performance.

Desirable

• Experience of using behavioural change and counselling techniques to promote lifestyle changes with individuals and/or groups.
• Experience of using Systmone for record keeping purposes.
• City & Guilds 7407 teaching certificate (or equivalent).
• Clinical Supervisory Skills course.
• Published reports and papers.
• Advanced counselling skills.
• Motivational interviewing skills.
• Member of relevant specialist groups e.g.BDA Paediatric Group, BDA Food Allergy Interest Group.

Experience

Essential

• Broad variety of post registration work experience as a registered dietitian.
• Previous clinical experience working with children requiring a variety of therapeutic diets.
• Previous leadership experience.

Desirable

• Experience of working in primary care/ community settings.
• Experience of working in the fields of food allergy and feeding difficulties.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).