Job responsibilities
Communication and working relationships
- To liaise daily with the dietitians regarding inpatients and outpatients nutritional care plans
- To liaise with dietitians and catering staff with regard to patients progress, the provision of therapeutic diets and snacks
- To communicate directly with dietetic and other hospital staff and multidisciplinary team members in the delivery and planning of patient care
- To communicate effectively with other disciplines both internally and externally
- To exercise judgement when dealing with enquiries from patients relatives, medical staff and public and analyse and deal with problems as appropriate and in a sensitive manner
- Communicate with staff to promote the use of the MUST nutritional screening tool
- To use the telephone to receive referrals, review patients and respond to requests for information in a sensitive and supportive manner. This may include giving first line advice.
- To use an agreed pro-forma to undertake telephone reviews for patients under the care of the team
- To disseminate knowledge to dietetic staff through in-service training and initiate and provide training/presentation sessions for other healthcare professions and patient groups
- To contribute to the education of multidisciplinary groups, patients, families, carers and general public as appropriate
- To liaise with company representatives regarding specialist nutritional products information as required
Planning and organisation
- To organise and coordinate the type 1 diabetes education programme
- Prioritise workload in a satisfactory manner in order to meet specified deadlines
- To manage own caseload of selected patients implementing nutritional care plans and monitoring progress against agreed specific criteria and seeking assistance appropriately
- To help update and maintain department internal and external websites
Responsibility and accountability
- To understand and carry out a range of daily work procedures following on-the-job training. This will include undertaking anthropometric and body composition measurements and taking dietary histories
- To monitor and accurately record patient intake of food, fluid, snacks and supplements and to ensure the completion of food record charts as required by the acute dietitians.
- To maintain accurate, timely, documentation in dietetic records in line with trust guidelines and inform supervising dietitian of all interventions.
- To keep accurate statistics of daily activities in line with service and trust requirements
- To be able to multi-task and work in an environment with interruptions where concentration is required
- To be responsible for and actively record your own personal development
- To be involved in the planning of Nutrition Support and Diabetes study days in the hospital and wider health community
- To assist in the planning, organisation, delivery and evaluation of study days when required
- To maintain and improve professional knowledge through attendance at study days as agreed with the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics
- To undertake any other duties that may be required by the Team Lead or Head of Dietetics
- Professional accountability is to the Lead Dietitian
Responsibility for patients and client care
- To help patients to improve their nutritional intake by offering assistance and advice regarding menu choices suitable for their dietary needs
- To support the dietitian with patients requiring nutritional supplements such as trialling supplements with patients to identify taste and preferences, monitoring actual intake and trialling alternative products.
- To gather information regarding the barriers that a patient has surrounding eating
- To seek advice from the dietitians when progression of treatment is required or a change to a patients condition has occurred
Policy and service responsibility
- To maintain standards of confidentiality.
- To contribute to audit projects which will include clinical data collection and collation to demonstrate outcomes of care and satisfaction survey.
- To demonstrate a sound understanding of clinical risk and reporting untoward incidents and complaints both verbally to seniors and in writing
- In line with the Trusts commitment to Clinical Governance, to participate in clinical audit and evaluate your own clinical effectiveness
- To comply with fire, health & safety, universal precautions, infection control and all other departmental policies
Responsibility for equipment and other resources
- To be responsible for anthropometric and body composition equipment
- To monitor ordering and report on use of oral nutritional supplements across the hospital
Responsibility for supervision, leadership and management
- To assist, if required, in the training of students on clinical placement and of other dietetic support workers
Information technology and administrative duties
- To assist the dietitians in the administrative and computing tasks not requiring the expertise of a dietitian such as computer analysis of patient intakes, assisting in the discharge of patients on home enteral feeds, maintaining databases.
- To file dietetic clinic patient cards and to pull these in a timely manner for the dietitian ahead of their clinic
- To complete general office administration such as writing and emailing letters to GPs, filing, enveloping letters, typing, collection of clinic cards in preparation for outpatient clinics, arranging appointments
- To participate in a number of clinical/non clinical audits e.g. documentation audit
- To use a computer package to generate dietary analysis information as requested by dietitians
- To participate in menu analysis/ catering audits to ensure that hospital menus meet NHS and Trust standards and the nutritional needs of patients.
- To plan group sessions for patients with support from the dietitian including inviting patients, sending out letters, blood forms, symptom evaluation forms etc. to patient
- To develop resources for displays at study days/for health promotion
- To support the service in preparation, delivery and evaluation of presentations to patients or staff groups as required
- Take minutes at all team meetings and support completion of actions raised
- To undertake stock control and ordering of nutritional products, diet sheets, information leaflets
- To organise patient appointments as needed
- To send and receive emails and to use computer packages to produce dietetic resources
