Nutrition Therapy Practitioner - Band 4 - Dietetics

Job description

Job responsibilities

Job summary:

Under the supervision of a registered practitioner, the post holder will be expected to:

Provide a nutrition therapy service to people in nursing and residential homes with the aim of optimising their nutrition and hydration

Contribute to minimising admissions to secondary care with conditions secondary to poorly individualised nutrition and hydration plans for example dysphagia, UTIs, aspiration, disease or age-related malnutrition, pressure areas.

Support the directive to minimise oral nutritional supplements (ONS) wastage by providing key education on food first methodology to nursing and catering departments within care homes (NHSE medicines management optimisation in care homes (2018)

Support and coordinate the delivery of the national International Dysphagia Diet Standards Initiative (IDDSI) directive with community dietetics and speech and language therapy departments.

Work with nursing/ catering departments to embed good practice and policy within care homes for nutrition and hydration management.

Deliver group training sessions to care home staff in the use of the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST),Food First , basic principles of safe swallowing and IDDSI.

Communicate effectively with dietitians, speech and language therapists and other relevant departments.

Collect baseline and outcomes data to be able to demonstrate efficacy of the role.

Key Relationships:

Care home and residential home staff

Speech and Language Therapists & Dietitians

Colleagues and other professionals within acute, primary, and tertiary healthcare

Providers of oral nutrition support and thickener products

Job responsibilities:

1. Communication and Team Working

1.1 To communicate effectively with patients, care staff and relatives regarding patient

treatment. This may include patients with barriers to understanding.

1.2 To feed back to the multidisciplinary team including doctors, nurses, and other health care

professionals regarding present patient care and treatment.

1.3 To represent Dietetics and Speech and Language Therapy by attending internal and external meetings and convey information relating to the nursing home project as required.

1.4 To act as a direct contact of support for the care homes and other professionals working in care homes.

1.5 To be responsible for raising the profile and awareness of nutrition, hydration, and dysphagia days in the care homes.

1.6 To maintain and develop robust relationships at all levels to influence, challenge and support the provision of learning technologies that would enhance training and educational requirements.

1.7 To provide end user support, guidance and problem solve issues relating to the digital offering.

1.8 To liaise with community speech and language staff, dietetic staff, primary care health professionals and other relevant care agencies in the community.

1. Planning and Organising

2.1 To organise and prioritise own daily workload with supervision and within the scope of the

role.

2.2 To work independently, managing own project, identifying care home training needs

and resources, identifying and delivering these. Liaising with the relevant individuals directly.

2.3 To organise and chair regular meetings for the Nutrition Support Champions.

1. Training and Teaching

3,1 To produce training materials, to meet a range of care home training needs including

designing, implementing, and delivering interactive e-learning packages, webinars, bespoke training sessions, and how to videos.

3.2 To keep up to date with and research any best practice guidance, relevant research

or standards and adapt and implement these into training/practice and resources for the department/ care homes. Disseminate relevant information to the team.

3.3 To be responsible for the recruitment of nutrition champions and provision of any additional training need.

1. Administration

4.1 To be responsible for documenting intervention in the appropriate medical notes as per Trust policy and departmental guidelines.

4.2 To maintain and develop any specific resources including diet sheets, information leaflets

on supporting services and any other educational resources relevant to promoting nutrition and hydration to nursing home and residential home residents and staff.

4.3 To develop audit documentation for care homes based on policies and best practice

guidance to improve efficacy of nutrition and hydration care in care homes by

improving the quality of screening, nutrition and hydration delivery and individualised care plans.

4.4 To provide administrative support to the Nutrition Support Champions.

4.5 To be responsible for developing support materials for awareness days relating to nutrition,

hydration and dysphagia in the care homes.

4.6 Design, develop, evaluate, and deliver interactive and engaging online resources to

support learning, including but not limited to; eLearning, multimedia (video/audio)

animations and assessments.

4.7 Proofread and edit digital content.

4.8 Exploring the best digital learning approach and technology helping to build and

design from inception to completion. Liaising and coordinating with other project

team members and delivering outputs to agreed timescales.

4.9 Analyse and extract information from Feedback submitted to help improve current

and future online learning content, engagement, and experience.

4.10 Undertake regular evaluation and audits of online/digital learning resources to

identify improvements and further development required.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Maths and English GCSE grade C or above or equivalent

Desirable

• Foundation degree or Level 3 qualification

Experience

Essential

• Experience working in an acute/primary healthcare setting
• Experience working with the public
• Experience of working with people who have communication difficulties

Desirable

• Experience of working in a multidisciplinary environment
• Experience of working in a caring, health and wellbeing environment
• Experience of electronic record keeping

Skills & Abilities

Essential

• Good verbal and written communication skills
• Presentation skills
• Good interpersonal skills
• Excellent organisation skills/time management
• Ability to work to clear protocols/guidelines within role boundaries

Desirable

• Counselling/ behaviour change skills
• Familiar with food fortification techniques and the appropriate use of oral nutritional supplements
• Familiar with national International Dysphagia Diet Standards Initiative (IDDSI) directive
• Ability to impart knowledge to others

Personal Qualities

Essential

• Commitment to delivering a consistent high professional standard throughout interventions
• Maturity and confidence to work and challenge within a multidisciplinary team
• Flexible and reliable approach to working duties
• Able to problem solve
• Able to prioritise and work under pressure
• Able to work both on own initiative and also within a team
• Commitment to continuing personal and professional development

Other Requirements

Essential

• Ability to travel to all rural locations to carry out post

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.

Employer details

Employer name

West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust

Address

Harwick Lane

Bury St Edmunds

Suffolk

IP33 2QZ

Employer's website

https://www.wsh.nhs.uk (Opens in a new tab)