Paediatric and Neonatal Dietetic Service Lead

Job overview

We have an exciting opportunity for a Paediatric and Neonatal Dietetic Service Lead to join our team for 30 hours per week. This is a great opportunity to combine advanced clinical practice with leadership, working across a busy and well-established service supporting babies, children and their families.

You’ll play a key role in delivering highly specialised nutritional care to complex neonatal and paediatric patients, while also leading and developing the dietetic team. Working closely with a supportive multidisciplinary team, you’ll help shape care pathways, drive service improvements and ensure high-quality, evidence-based care is delivered.

The role offers a varied clinical remit, including specialist areas such as neonatal inpatients, neonatal outreach services, and cystic fibrosis MDT clinics. You’ll also have the opportunity to scope and establish priority areas for the service, adapting to a changing clinical environment and helping shape future direction.  In addition the role will work alongside LMNS AHP colleagues delivering high-quality neonatal inpatient care, supporting strong collaboration across services.

The successful candidate will benefit from a rewarding and diverse role, with opportunities to influence practice, support staff development and contribute to innovation across the service.

Successful applicants will be required to provide an immunisation and vaccination report, from either their current UK occupational health provider or their UK GP.

Main duties of the job

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To be responsible for the assessment, diagnosis and management of children with nutritional  and feeding difficulties from 0-16 years and babies within the neonatal service, prioritising  clinical needs to provide an effective and efficient service.
• Demonstrate advanced knowledge and skills to manage a caseload including highly complex and specialist cases, evidencing high level problem solving, reasoning skills and independence of judgement, seeking advice as appropriate.
• To develop specific care plans and provide appropriate intervention using specialist knowledge to inform sound clinical judgements/decision making for case management.
• To provide specialist advice to others regarding the management and care of children and neonates with feeding and nutritional difficulties using evidence-based practice and outcome measures.
• To work closely with parents/carers and professionals to agree effective management of nutritional issues to support safe and positive feeding development.
• To comply with the safeguarding policies of the Trust, ensuring all concerns, incidents and allegations are reported in line with this.
• To demonstrate negotiation skills to develop effective working relationships with patients, carers and their families, and contribute to interagency/multi-disciplinary team building, developing effective working relationships with members of the multi disciplinary team, related agencies and colleagues.
• To evaluate the outcomes of intervention and demonstrate clinical effectiveness, and by use of evidence-based practice and outcome measures.
• To maintain up-to-date and accurate case notes in line with HCPC and BDA professional standards and local trust policies, including assessment results, treatment plans and reporting to source of referral and other appropriate colleagues. Reports will reflect specialist knowledge of diagnosis and individualised management/care plans and be of a high standard.
• To contribute to clinical teams both multi-disciplinary and uni-disciplinary by discussing own and others’ input around patients’ needs ensuring a well-co-ordinated care plan.
• To communicate complex condition-related information from assessment to carers, families and members of the multi-disciplinary team/other professions. This involves maintaining sensitivity at all times to the emotional needs of patients and families, in particular when imparting potentially distressing information regarding the nature of the patient’s difficulties and implications of the same.
• To demonstrate a high degree of empathy, reassurance and sensitivity when communicating, teaching and providing instruction to parents/carers and colleagues, ensuring that effective communication is achieved, particularly where barriers to understanding exist.
• To manage and prioritise own caseload independently, using locally and nationally identified prioritisation systems.
• To manage and prioritise own workload, demonstrating an ability to be flexible in day to-day operational activity, including being responsive to unpredictable work patterns, deadlines and frequent interruptions.
• To contribute to interagency/multi-disciplinary team building, developing effective working relationships with related agencies and colleagues.
• To demonstrate the ability to manage unpleasant situations using effective communication including the application of appropriate management strategies, to manage the emotional consequences in self and others of working with clients with distressing conditions
• To assist with the identification of training needs within the team and to contribute to formal and informal teaching and training, both within the profession and with other professionals or voluntary groups.
• To develop and support clinical competencies for staff at all levels including band 7
• To undertake risk assessments in the designated clinical area, informing the Service lead and Dietetic manager and agreeing and implementing an action plan.

For further details of the role please see the attached job description/Person specification.