Specialist Eating Disorders Dietitian - North Essex

Job overview

This is an exciting opportunity for a motivated Specialist Dietitian who has an interest in working in a Community Adult Eating Disorder Service, on a 12-month Fixed Term Contract covering maternity leave. This role is part of the current transformation programme across mental health services within Essex.  However, we are a Trust wide service and the postholder will be expected to work in other locations in the Trust as required.

The post holder will provide specialist dietetic input to adults with eating disorders in the community and in Day Care, including in the FREED pathway. It will involve working with service users and multidisciplinary team members to identify and address the complex psychological and social factors that affect the dietary treatment, thus enabling long term/permanent lifestyle changes.

Managing severely underweight patients with Anorexia Nervosa that are at risk of refeeding syndrome whilst in an Acute setting will require collaborative liaison work with the acute trusts.

You will be expected to work collaboratively with key partner organisations, service users, carers, clinicians and other practitioners within the multi-disciplinary team in delivering services; working flexibly where appropriate and operationally required.

Main duties of the job

• To lead the EPUT Eating Disorders Nutrition and Dietetics provision for the north team of the Community Adult Eating Disorder Service.
• To provide specialist dietetic assessment, diagnosis and treatment programmes to individual service users with a variety of complex dietetic needs within the community (including FREED and Day Care) eating disorders pathway.
• To provide expert nutritional advice, signposting, guidance and information to health and social care professionals, clients, carers, relatives or other non-professional contacts to ensure care is delivered in accordance with evidence-based practice.
• To assess, plan, implement and evaluate specialised dietetic interventions for people with Eating Disorders in community and inpatient settings.
• Formulate and deliver individual treatment programmes based on specialist knowledge, evidence-based practise, national and local guidelines using profession-specific clinical skills and techniques (eg 1:1’s, group activities, patient education, carer education).
• To manage complex and challenging caseloads and be able to appropriately prioritise by need.
• To provide complex dietary support with a challenging patient population.
• To be instrumental in developing the Eating Disorders Dietetic Service in line with the Service vision and best evidence-based practice.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please refer to the attached Job Description and Person Specification for a detailed list of responsibilities.