Bank Specialist Clinical Community Dietitian

We are looking for a BANK Band 6 Dietitian to join our supportive Adult Clinical Community Team to cover maternity leave.
Community Dietitians have the fulfilling task of working with patients, families, and carers within their own homes or community bases, developing a great understanding of individual beliefs, traditions, lifestyle and personal preferences in order to support them to achieve their nutritional goals and maximise nutritional status.
As a Band 6 Dietitian you will work alongside a team of Dietitians to provide a specialist service to the Inpatient Mental Health Services, Adults with a Learning Disability and Home Enteral Tube Feeding.
We work with a diverse population across Luton and Bedfordshire.
The post holder will provide safe and effective care to all team caseloads including:
Inpatient Mental Health
Adults with a Learning Disability
Adult home enteral tube feeding.
The general and often complex home visit service, working with patients and the people involved in their support system, to maximise effectiveness.
The community clinic service covering a vast array of clinical conditions.
Our welcoming and supportive Nutrition and Dietetic Department includes Community Paediatrics, Diabetes and Prescribing Support. We are dedicated to personal development and encourage all staff to achieve their career aspirations. We support inter-team working and you will work closely with all members of the department to develop the service and your role. Learning opportunities are plentiful with department wide CPD programmes, clinical supervision and, Trust and external training opportunities.
Our office is in Luton. There will be the opportunity, but not the expectation, for some home working.
Rated ‘Outstanding’ by the Care Quality Commission, we are proud to provide high quality innovative services across most of the east of England that enable people to receive care closer to home and live healthier lives.
There’s one reason why our services are outstanding - and that’s our amazing staff - who, for the seventh year running, rated us incredibly highly in the national staff survey.
**Main Duties and Responsibilities**:

- To plan, deliver and evaluate the specialist dietetic services provided by the Adult Clinical Community Team.
- Delivery of services includes assessment, treatment and ongoing management of community patients including community-based inpatient units, mental health units, care homes, clinics and domiciliary visiting including home enterally fed patients.
- To undertake comprehensive assessments of patients, including biochemistry, anthropometrics, clinical condition, diet history and social circumstances.
- To use advanced clinical reasoning skills to interpret data and implement appropriate patient centred nutritional aims and plans including timely onward referrals as appropriate.
- To utilise prioritisation skills and plan the day-to-day provision of dietetic services within your own caseload.
- To be responsible for the provision and development of dietetic services in your specialist areas across the Trust, and to be responsible for service change in those specialist areas in response to service requirements.
- To ensure your own nutrition and dietetic knowledge is up-to-date and evidence-based including the current developments for nutrition in community dietetics and within your specialist area.
- To give expert opinion on complex nutrition related issues where a number of social, ethical, psychological and medical factors have to be considered and where there may be conflicting ideas within the multidisciplinary team.
- To act as an autonomous practitioner to provide expert nutritional advice. This may involve seeking advice from peers within and outside the Trust.
- To be professionally and legally accountable and responsible for all aspects of your own work, including the management of patients in your care.
- To evaluate and review your own work and that of the service, seeking the views of others and adopting the principles of evidence based practice to ensure maintenance and development of clinical and professional standards.
- To develop robust and evidence based policies and procedures to support service delivery.
- To provide educational activities, training and teaching for Dietitians, Dietetic Assistant Practitioners, Medical and Nursing staff and Allied Health Professionals.
- To write and update patient and professional literature.
- To carry out audit work within the department and your specialist areas.
- To work closely all teams within the department and in particular the Food First Team to support service development and delivery.
- To work independently and undertake lone working in the community.
- To provide training and supervision for student Dietitians, providing constructive feedback to support development.
- Undertaking any other Band 6 duties identified by the team as required for successful service delivery.

Communication
- To possess and utilise