Care of Older People Dietitian

Job overview

This is an exciting opportunity to join our team at a time when there are many improvements being made to nutritional care for our patients.

You will be part of a friendly and supportive dietetic team who work closely with the MDT to ensure we provide excellent care to our patients.

If you have a passion for the elderly, thrive when facing challenges and have the energy and initiative to support and inspire other health care professionals this is the job for you.

Main duties of the job

Main duties of this role include:

To be the expert source of information relating to nutritional care and the older person, advising and guiding with revision of policy and protocols and be completely up to date with relevant evidence based guidelines in this specific area.

Management of a clinical caseload of older people with a range of clinical conditions and supervision and oversight of dietetic staff supporting the rest of the caseload on care of older people wards.

Active contribution to MDT working relating to nutritional care on the ward, ethical considerations for feeding interventions, best interest meetings.

Working closely with our catering colleagues to support effective food service on the ward and representing the dietetic team at the monthly Inpatient Dining Meeting.

Supporting initiatives to improve patient nutritional care such as Supported Mealtimes and Patient Social Dining.

Supporting student dietitians in their training and providing nutritional education and training to other health care professionals in the Trust.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Main responsibilities of the role:

To work as a member of the Dietetic department, as the expert resource for the nutritional management of older adult patients in hospital, providing highly specialist advice, education and support to patients, carers and other health care professionals.

The role includes responsibility for a clinical caseload of older patients with a wide range of clinical conditions. You will be required to support patients, carers and the multi-disciplinary team, leading nutritional care on the wards, providing nutritional education and supporting the team and individual patients in complex decision making related to feeding. The role includes supervision of dietitians working on the older people wards to ensure a consistent high standard of nutritional care is provided across all three COOP wards. You will be expected to demonstrate an innovative approach and a commitment to service improvement by leading on nutritional audits, development activities and training.

The role also leads on the day-to-day management of catering issues for all patients within the hospital. You will liaise directly with our catering colleagues to ensure additional nutritional support measures are provided as required for vulnerable patients.

Please see attached job description for more detail.