Dietetic Assistant

Job overview

We have a fantastic opportunity for a compassionate, motivated, and flexible individual with excellent communication skills to join our Inpatient Dietetic Team as a Dietetic Assistant. This exciting post offers the chance to develop your knowledge and skills within a busy acute hospital environment, supporting inpatients across a range of specialties.

Working alongside Registered Dietitians and wider MDT colleagues, you will help ensure patients receive high‑quality nutritional care during their hospital stay. The diversity of the caseload will enable you to develop skills in areas such as nutrition support and patient education. We are seeking individuals with an interest in nutrition and previous experience within a healthcare environment.

Main duties of the job

Under the supervision of qualified Dietitians you will contribute to the delivery of dietetic care by:

• Supporting nutrition screening and nutrition support plans
• Assisting with patient reviews on inpatient wards
• Providing basic dietetic advice under supervision
• Delivering health promotion activities
• Contributing to teaching sessions for staff groups
• Helping update resources and liaising with catering teams where required
• Administrative duties attached to the clinical role e.g. IT processes for patients on home enteral nutrition

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see attached JD for complete list.

Clinical

Working independently within defined competences, protocols and reporting structures to support registered dietetic staff in inpatient services as follows:

• To support the adult inpatient teams in managing the inpatient caseload as requested by:

a. identifying patients nutritionally at risk on the wards

b. identifying patient food and drink preferences

c. reviewing and monitoring nutritional intake

• To be responsible for own delegated caseload of patients who are at risk of malnutrition, malnourished or enterally fed and maintain associated records.
• To carry out assessments and reviews as requested by qualified dietetic staff, according to defined protocols, both as inpatient and telephone reviews
• To document assessments and reviews and care plans in patients medical notes according to Trust policy including uploading documents onto patients medical records as required.
• To support high quality feeding practice at ward level and optimise patients oral nutrition by contributing to multidisciplinary team working, under the supervision of qualified dietetic staff.
• To participate in caseload supervision and huddles to support caseload management

Communication

• To provide and receive sensitive/contentious information to and from patients, staff and service users demonstrating appropriate information governance awareness
• To use alternative and appropriate methods of communication when barriers to understanding / communication exist
• To communicate clinical information accurately, effectively and speedily to qualified staff to facilitate timely services for patients.

Information/Audit/Quality

• To maintain the high quality standards of the service by initiating and contributing to individual and service objectives.
• To collate routine or ad hoc activity data or other information as requested by senior team members
• To support clinical audit activities within the department. This may involve data collection and processing.

Clerical/Administrative

• To undertake routine office duties regarding post, filing, photocopying, room bookings, telephone answering and message taking
• To monitor department supplies and resources and use the Oracle system for requesting orders via Therapy Lead for Dietetics.
• To prepare complex documents using Word, Power Point and Excel as requested by the dietitians e.g. education sheets and presentation slides/handouts.