Acute Dietetic Assistant Practitioner

at  Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

The work will involve supporting the dietitians who work on the adult wards at Kettering General Hospital. You will support referral management and triage, complete nutritional assessment of patients and review care plans put in place by the dietitian. You will work closely with the dietitians and there will be an opportunity for you to support student and staff training in the MDT and become involved and dietetic promotions and campaigns.

This role is within our large, friendly, motivated countywide dietetic service. We provide a clinical dietetic service to patients and health and social care professionals across Northamptonshire. Within this we have a service within Kettering General Hospital, providing direct care for inpatients that have been identified at nutritional risk.

• Leading on the management of the referral for patients requiring dietetic intervention using the established referral process. This will include accepting the referral and when indicated communicating back to the referrer, registering the patient onto the system and prioritising based on level of nutritional risk. Clinical decision making without direct supervision is required but you will have access to advice and support from senior staff.
• Discussing and documenting the individual’s treatment plan and their related condition/illness without supervision from the dietitian. You will liaise with the care team and deliver specific interventions and/or treatments within the plan and plan for safe and effective discharge. You will identify specific precautions or contraindications to the proposed interventions / treatments and takes the appropriate action.
• Communicating with nutritional companies and the hospital procurement to request products.
• To support service evaluations, audit and service improvement work
• Being involved in promoting the dietetic department and supporting themed weeks on nutrition to promote learning and engagement across the hospital
• Inputting patient diet history records for computer dietary analysis, using knowledge of food portion sizes and calorific values of foods to ensure accurate results are achieved on a daily basis. Store new foods into dietary analysis program for further use.

NHFT is an integrated primary care and mental health Trust, providing physical, mental health and specialty services in both hospital settings and out in the community. Because we put the person at the centre of all we do, we focus on delivering care that is as easy to access as possible. This means many of our services can be provided at home, work or in schools. We also provide health services to various prisons and detention centres in Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire.
NHFT promotes a culture of learning to improve the care and safety of our patients and staff, which focuses on people who enable our Trust to be ‘outstanding’ by supporting opportunity, innovation, development and growth.
For further information on the advertised role, please refer to the job description located under the Supporting Documents heading. The full person specification can be accessed under the ‘About You’ Section of the document

• Leading on the management of the referral for patients requiring dietetic intervention using the established referral process. This will include accepting the referral and when indicated communicating back to the referrer, registering the patient onto the system and prioritising based on level of nutritional risk. Clinical decision making without direct supervision is required but you will have access to advice and support from senior staff.
• Discussing and documenting the individual’s treatment plan and their related condition/illness without supervision from the dietitian. You will liaise with the care team and deliver specific interventions and/or treatments within the plan and plan for safe and effective discharge. You will identify specific precautions or contraindications to the proposed interventions / treatments and takes the appropriate action.
• Communicating with nutritional companies and the hospital procurement to request products.
• To support service evaluations, audit and service improvement work
• Being involved in promoting the dietetic department and supporting themed weeks on nutrition to promote learning and engagement across the hospital
• Inputting patient diet history records for computer dietary analysis, using knowledge of food portion sizes and calorific values of foods to ensure accurate results are achieved on a daily basis. Store new foods into dietary analysis program for further use