Critical Care Specialist Dietitian

Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust, (LGT), is a community-focused provider of local and acute care, delivering high-quality services to over one million people living across the London boroughs of Lewisham, Greenwich, and Bexley. We provide whole-life care and are here to support our communities to live healthier lives as well as taking care of them when they need us the most.

Employing almost 7,500 colleagues, affectionately known as Team LGT, we provide services at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, University Hospital Lewisham, and at over a dozen community settings in Lewisham. We also provide some services at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup.

We have recently launched our new vision and values to mark the LGT10 – the tenth anniversary of our Trust forming in 2013. Our trust vision is to be exceptional. In the quality of our patient care; our support for colleagues; and in the difference we make through our partnerships and in our communities.

To achieve this we value Respect, Compassion, and Inclusion; Being accountable over staying comfortable; Listening over always knowing best; and Succeeding together over achieving alone. You can read more about our visions and values here

Our hospitals and community sites provide a wide range of inpatient and outpatient services, as well as emergency and planned care. The Trust is rated as “good” or “outstanding” in over three-quarters of the services inspected by the Care Quality Commission.

Every year our work includes performing 10,000 procedures in our theatres; bringing seven and a half thousand new lives into the world; carrying out 570,000 visits to patients in their homes or communities and providing emergency care for more than 300,000 patients arriving in our busy Urgent and Emergency Departments.

LGT is a centre for the education and training of medical students enrolled with King’s College London’s GKT School of Medical Education. We are a training centre for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals. We are pioneering new roles that will support the changing needs of our patients and are one of the largest employers of physician associates in the country.

We are committed to working with our partners to deliver the best outcomes for our local communities. This means playing an active role in the South East London Integrated Care System (ICS), and in formal partnerships including the South East London Acute Provider Collaborative, provider partnerships with our local mental health trusts and borough-based boards of the ICS in Bexley, Greenwich and Lewisham.

Job overview

1. 4 WTE, 15 hours per week

You will be joining our QEH team of Dietitians, Assistants and Admin staff, and will develop close working relationships with the ICU MDT at QEH, and ICU Dietetic colleagues at Lewisham Hospital.

Main duties of the job

This is an excellent opportunity to expand and develop your knowledge, skills and leadership in this specialist area. Responsibilities will include:

• Providing the dietetic service to Critical Care Unit - a busy 18 bedded unit offering exposure to a wide range of level 2 and 3 patients with complex clinical conditions.
• Daily ward rounds with the consultant-led multidisciplinary team
• Service development including audits, and engaging with research opportunities.
• Attending weekly MDT meetings, and monthly clinical governance meetings.
• Delivering teaching and training programmes for the junior doctors on ICU and nurses on the Critical Care course

Along with your Band 7 colleagues you will be involved in leading on service improvements and the development of policies, guidelines and specialist resources. You will also provide supervision and support to Band 5 and Band 6 dietitians to develop team skills and resilience.

All Team members are supported to participate in audits, service evaluations, and continuous professional development. All Dietetic staff are actively involved in training students from the London universities on the 1, 2, 3 Placement programme.

For further information/questions please contact:

[email protected]

Working for our organisation

Our people are our greatest asset. When we feel supported and happy at work, this positivity reaches those very people we are here for, the patients. Engaged employees perform at their best and our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) initiatives contribute to cultivate a culture of engagement. We have four staff networks, a corporate EDI Team and a suite of programmes and events which aim to insert the 5 aspirations:

1. Improving representation at senior levels of staff with disabilities, from black, Asian, and ethnic minorities background, identify as LGBTQ+ and women, through improved recruitment and leadership development
2. Widening access (anchor institution) and employability
3. Improving the experience of staff with disability
4. Improving the EDI literacy and confidence of trust staff through training and development
5. Making equalities mainstream

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Job Summary:

1. To act as an advanced specialist within a critical care, managing own highly specialist caseload
2. To provide advanced nutritional and dietetic advice in specialist area to medical, health care professionals and other agencies.
3. To assess plan and implement treatment programmes and monitor patients in a variety of settings, offering therapeutic dietary advice and education, to address patients` complex and changing needs.
4. To participate in service development within own clinical area and contribute to the nutrition and dietetic service as a whole through participation in service development.
5. To provide leadership and training within specialist area for other dietetic colleagues

Clinical responsibilities:

• Act as an independent advanced practitioner and be professionally and legally accountable and take responsibility for all aspects of own highly specialist clinical caseload.
• Work independently to undertake nutritional assessments and calculate nutritional requirements of patients with complex conditions using anthropometry.
• Communicate evidence based nutritional and dietary advice in an understandable form.
• Use highly developed communication and counselling skills such as reflective listening, open questioning, empathy, explanation and reassurance to communicate dietary intervention to patients and carers.
• 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.
• Devise, monitor and review 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.
• Actively participate in multidisciplinary team meetings.
• Ensure safe and timely transfer of patients by liaising with appropriate internal and external agencies.
• Provide dietetic cover to other areas during periods of annual leave/sick leave.
• Accurately record all assessments and interventions in medical notes, nursing documentation and electronic patient record system in line with Trust policy.
• Facilitate discharge of patients with complex needs by liaising with hospital staff, external agencies and multidisciplinary teams about the nutritional management of patients discharged into and their continued diet therapy within the community.

(See Job Description and Person Specification for full details)

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A PART-TIME ROLE - 15hrs/Week

Person specification

Qualifications

• BSc Nutrition & Dietetics, or BSc in relevant science subject plus PGDip Dietetics.

Applicant criteria

• HCPC registration
• Experience of working in Critical Care
• Significant experience of enteral feeding
• Currently working at Band 6 (or international equivalent) or above
• Supervisor role experience

• Experience of teaching, training and presenting to groups
• Member of specialist interest group relating to clinical area.
• Experience of PN

We reserve the right to close the post before the stated closing date, please apply early. We do not contact applicants with the outcome of the shortlisting. If you have been shortlisted, you will receive an invite to an assessment day or interview.

We have a number of active staff networks including Disability, LGBT+, Multicultural Inclusion and Women’s staff networks to bring staff together and celebrate diversity across our whole workforce.

Please note, not all roles will meet the criteria for a skilled worker visa.