Specialist Paediatric Dietitian

Job overview

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An exciting vacancy has arisen for an enthusiastic and self-motivated Dietitian to work as a Specialist Band 7 Paediatric Dietitian at Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust. This is a 1-year fixed term maternity leave cover starting in January 2025.

Your base will be Queen Elizabeth Hospital  in Greenwich. We are looking for a dietitian who is keen to innovate and work together with our acute across site team. You will join a friendly department comprising 45 dietitians across the two Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust hospital sites and Lewisham community.

Main duties of the job

This post will be the inpatient lead at QEH , covering HDU (4 beds) and sharing the children’s ward with our Band 6 Paediatric Dietitian who you will directly supervise.

The post will also provide 2 outpatients clinic a week, one general and the other consisting of neonatal graduates and the under 1’s. You will be actively involved in training students from the London universities on the 1,2,3 Placement programme.

• Responsible for the 4-bedded HDU.
• Share the children’s ward with the Band 6 Paediatric Dietitian.
• Provide two outpatient clinics a week: One general clinic. One for children under one year old and Neonatal graduates.
• One general clinic.
• One for children under one year old and Neonatal graduates.
• Actively involved in training students from London universities on the 1,2,3 Placement programme.
• Provide Band 6 Paediatric supervision.
• Participate in audits, service evaluations, and continuous professional development.
• Take a lead in service improvements and developing policies and guidelines.

Lewisham and Greenwich is a very friendly supportive NHS Trust, with a strong focus on staff well being.

PREVIOUS APPLICANTS NEED NOT APPLY

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Job Summary:

Key Result Areas & Performance:

The post holder will be the clinical paediatric team lead for QEH. They will provide the HDU service (4 beds) on the children’s ward and jointly share acute Paediatric inpatients. They will support the across site neonatal post and provide an outpatient clinic. You will be actively involved in training students from the London universities on the 1,2,3 Placement programme. All dietetic staff are encouraged to participate in audits, service evaluations, and continuous professional development. Band 7s take a lead in service improvements and developing policies and guidelines, offer supervision and support to Band 5 and Band 6 dietitians across the trust and develop specialist resources. This post is accountable to the Head of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Clinical Duties and Responsibilities

Communication and Relationship Skills

• To provide expert, specialist, evidence based, dietetic advice and care to paediatric patients and their carer’s. Communicating highly complex and sensitive information on nutrition using negotiation, counselling and behavioural change skills.

• To work autonomously when assessing patients, making clinical decisions, selecting treatments and evaluating outcomes of dietetic interventions.
• To collaborate with team members to ensure the child receives care and advice on all aspects of feeding at home. This will require particularly close liaison with the Children’s Community Nursing Team and Speech and Language therapists, Occupational Therapists, Feeding Team and Consultant Paediatricians.

• To develop and maintain close communications with all health care professionals (Consultants, GPs, Acute Dietitians, HEN Team, Children’s Community Nurses, SALTs, OT’s, Physio’s, School Teachers, School Nurses, Health Visitors, Social workers, Portage workers), private sector companies and other agencies as necessary in order to provide co-ordinated patient centred care.

• To work with families who may have learning disabilities, mental health problems and challenging behaviours
• To work with patients who have language barriers to effective communication. This may often require the use of interpreting services via the telephone or with a relevant interpreter at the patient’s place of care.
• To empathise, communicate and reassure families who may be dealing with unpleasant circumstances/diagnosis relating to their child. This may include relaying additional unwelcome information relating to the long-term nutritional requirements of a child.
• To use motivational and negotiating skills to facilitate acceptance and ongoing compliance with nutritional treatment plans.

• To act as a keyworker to certain families. Besides acting as an emotional support for the family the Dietitian will be responsible as the organisational link between all health professionals involved in the acute and community settings ensuring consistency of services.
• To be involved with children and their carers placed on the child protection register. The dietitian will be responsible for receiving highly confidential, complex and sensitive information and will act within Lewisham and Greenwich Paediatric Community Services child protection policies.
• To document all activities concerning patient care in the electronic paediatric dietetic patient record notes including all confidential correspondence with health care professionals in accordance with trust policies.

• To produce timely and informative reports for Consultants, Paediatrician, GPs and other health professional relevant to a specific family.

• To negotiate with carers, clients and other members of the multi-disciplinary team around individual case management and to provide support to other team members and health care professionals in this specialist area.

Analytical and Judgement skills

• To make all clinical decisions and judgments autonomously guided by broad professional and organisational policies.
• To implement specialist clinical dietetic assessment, treatment and management of patients referred to the acute team. This will include the advising, ordering and prescribing of specialist products listed as ACBS (Advisory Committee on Borderline Substances).

• To analyse dietary intake and calculate nutritional requirements using clinical judgement and experience as well as computer software as required when completing a treatment plan for a specific patient.

• To be trained to trainer level in the use of anthropometrics equipment for the assessment of nutritional status such as skin fold callipers, portable and hoist scales, enteral feeding pumps and equipment.
• To take anthropometric measurements and interpret as part of nutrition assessment of patients ongoing monitoring.

Planning and Organisational Skills

• To manage and act as an independent holder of the paediatric caseload ensuring high quality dietetic care is delivered. Carrying out systematic review of patients at appropriate intervals according to prioritising criteria and clinical judgement.
• To liaise with health care professionals regarding hospital discharges or new referrals and offer joint visits as required enabling them to formulate nutrition care plans which are based on specialist assessment and recommendations.

• To provide cover for the other dietitians within the across site paediatric team during periods of staff absence.

• To devise and implement specialist evidence/research-based guidelines and protocols that can be used Trust(s) wide for the dietetic care management in relation to paediatric nutrition.

Managerial and Administrative Responsibilities

• To be solely responsible for prioritising and managing own caseload and to oversee the organisation and development of the caseload across the service, identifying shortfalls and issues to be addressed.
• To supervise dietitians and dietetic assistants who would assist in the care and administration of Paediatric patients.

• To be involved in the development of, write and update, disseminate and implement policies and procedures related to all aspects regarding acute Paediatric Dietetics across the Trust.

• To be aware of trust policies and procedure and participate in their creation and development. The dietitian will be responsible for working under these broad guidelines and when the need arises is able to discuss problems as part of a peer review.

• To ensure all equipment defects, accidents, complaints and clinical incidents are reported to the team leader and necessary action is taken by those concerned.

Education and Training Responsibilities

• To provide effective training to individual patients and their carers/families.
• To assist in the organisation and participate in formal study days, responsible for devising the contents of own specialist dietetic teaching.

• To participate in the training of student healthcare professionals.

• To undertake the measurement and evaluation of own work and current practices through the use and application of evidence-based practice projects, audit, research and outcome measures and lead others in doing so.

• To pursue an active programme of personal continuing professional development, including attendance at in-service training, journal clubs, and education forums and giving feedback to any courses or conferences attended.

• To attend and contribute to BDA specialist interest groups

Research and Audit

• Regularly take lead in clinical audit using research methodology and present/publish results to promote evidence-based practice.
• Undertakes clinical trials as appropriate in conjunction with the commercial sector

• To participate in any clinical research programmes and to initiate research as required.

• To contribute to team presentations and training on a local, regional and national basis.

• Clinical findings or scientific research should be presented at national conferences or study days