Specialist Dietitian

Job overview

We are looking to recruit a Band 6 Specialist Dietitian to join our Acute Adult Inpatient Team. Our service is organised into three clinical streams:

• Gastroenterology, including Hepatology, Luminal Gastroenterology and Nutrition Support Team (NST)
• Critical Care and Surgery
• Neurosciences/Stroke and General Medicine

The successful candidate will join one of these streams based on experience and clinical expertise. You can discuss your preferred stream at interview. Due to internal promotion, we have multiple Band 6 Specialist Dietitian vacancies available and intend to establish a Reserve List from this round of interviews. This will enable us to consider suitable candidates for future vacancies as they arise.

This is an exciting opportunity to develop your clinical skills while working closely with dietetic colleagues and a range of multidisciplinary teams across the hospital. We are committed to supporting your professional development with regular supervision and opportunities for internal and external learning.

You’ll be joining a diverse and multi-talented department where everyone’s background, experience and perspective are valued. Our team brings together a wide range of cultures, ideas and expertise. We are proud of our open, inclusive culture, where your voice matters and you will be encouraged to shape the way we work.

Main duties of the job

As a Specialist Dietitian in our Acute Adult Inpatient Team you’ll independently manage a caseload of complex patients, providing expert nutritional assessment, advice, and support. You’ll develop and review complex care plans, using advanced communication and motivational skills to help patients and carers navigate challenging diagnoses and treatments. You’ll work closely with multidisciplinary teams, contribute to service development, and act as a role model for our PRIDE values.

We’re looking for someone with strong clinical knowledge, empathy, and the ability to adapt in a fast-paced environment. Excellent communication, organisational skills, and a commitment to ongoing learning are essential.

Typical decisions you’ll make:

• Adjusting nutritional care plans in response to changing clinical needs and patient feedback.
• Prioritising your workload to balance direct patient care, MDT meetings, supervision, and service improvement projects.
• Choosing the best approach to engage and motivate patients and carers, using counselling and behaviour change techniques.

If you want to make a real impact, develop your expertise, and join a team where your ideas and individuality are valued, we’d love to hear from you.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To act as an independent advanced practitioner and be professionally and legally accountable and take responsibility for all aspects of own specialist clinical caseload.
• To work independently to undertake nutritional assessments and calculate nutritional requirements of patients with complex conditions using anthropometry.
• To communicate evidence based nutritional and dietary advice in an understandable form.
• To use highly developed communication and informal counselling skills such as reflective listening, open questioning, empathy, explanation and reassurance to communicate dietary intervention to patients and carers.
• To gain valid consent to treatment and negotiate change with patients by breaking down barriers, using motivational skills, to enable them to achieve dietary targets set.
• To devise, monitor and review complex nutritional care plans against outcome measures taking into account social, psychological, cognitive, behavioural and cultural needs, as well as taking into account the needs of the carer and adjust care plan to facilitate achievement of goals.
• To work in an often-stressful environment of looking after patients with a terminal illness and helping support the patient and carers through the emotional responsibility this can entail.
• To undertake designated specialist outpatient clinics.
• To actively participate in multidisciplinary team meetings.
• To ensure safe and timely transfer of patients by liaising with appropriate internal and external agencies.

Please view the attached job description for full details of the role and use your supporting statement to confirm how you meet the essential and desirable criteria on the job specification.

Please note due to high volume of applications for some posts, this post may close before the displayed closing date. We recommend that you apply for this role asap.

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.