Community Dietitian

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We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.

Job overview

We are looking for a passionate Dietitian to join our friendly, caring and forward-thinking Community Dietetics Team.

The role is based at Whiston Primary Care Resource Centre and you would part of the Community Care Division providing a dietetic service to the adult population of Knowsley and St Helens.

We welcome applications from motivated, enthusiastic, newly qualified or experienced Band 5 Dietitians as well as Dietetic students. Flexible working will be considered. The ability to travel in the community between St Helens and Knowsley Is essential.

Main duties of the job

This post will provide excellent experience in adult community dietetics with the opportunity to gain further knowledge in the areas of home enteral feeding and paediatrics .

You will be fully supported by your clinical supervisors with regular supervision sessions as well as joining the Trust's AHP Preceptorship programme .We also have a well-established student training programme which you will be actively involved in to develop your clinical supervisory skills.

Professional development is given a high priority within the department with CPD fully encouraged and supported by the Trust.

Working for our organisation

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.

We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.

We’re currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

• Assess, plan, develop, implement and evaluate programmes to promote and prevent adverse effects on health and well-being.
• Implement and evaluate individual treatment plans for patients.
• Identify, and manage as appropriate treatment plans for patients at risk.
• Prioritise health problems and intervene appropriately to assist the patient in complex, urgent or emergency situations.
• Provide information and advice on prescribed or over the counter medication.
• Recognise, assess and refer patients presenting with mental health needs.
• Promote and deliver evidenced based care.
• Assist senior practitioners as required.
• Utilise and demonstrate sensitive communication styles, to ensure patients are fully informed and consent to treatment.
• Communicate effectively with patients and carers, recognising the need for alternative methods of communication to overcome different levels of understanding, cultural backgrounds and preferred ways of communicating.
• Act as an advocate when representing patients and colleagues viewpoints to others.
• Recognise and work within own competence and professional code of conduct as regulated by the relevant professional body.
• Produce accurate, contemporaneous and complete records of patient consultation, consistent with legislation, policies and procedures
• Prioritise, organise and manage own workload in a manner that maintains and promotes quality.
• Deliver care according to national and local guidelines, working in partnership with other clinical teams/departments.
• Assess effectiveness of care delivery through self and peer review, benchmarking and formal evaluation.
• Participate in the maintenance of quality governance systems and processes across the organisation and its activities.
• Utilise the audit cycle as a means of evaluating quality implementing improvements where required.
• Evaluate the patients’ response to health care provision and the effectiveness of care.
• Support and participate in shared learning across the wider organisation.
• Utilising a structured framework (e.g. root cause analysis) participate in the management, review and identify learning from patient complaints, clinical incidents and near miss events.
• Participate in the performance monitoring review of the team, providing feedback as appropriate.
• Act as a positive role model takes responsibility for own development, learning and performance including participating in clinical supervision.
• Actively promote the workplace as a learning environment encouraging everyone to reach their potential, learn from each other and from external good practice.
• Understand own responsibilities and accountability in the delivery of care to patients, ensuring that the needs of the patient are the priority.
• Participate in planning and implementing changes within the area of care and responsibility.
• Work with other professionals to ensure sufficient staff of appropriate ability, quality and skill mix is available to meet the needs of patients.
• Contribute and participate in the development of local guidelines, protocols and standards.
• Critically evaluate and review innovations and developments that are relevant to own practice.
• Keep up to date with new developments locally and nationally identifying those that will enhance the teams work.
• Undertake mandatory and statutory training.
• Act as a mentor to students assessing competency against set standards as requested if appropriately qualified.
• Accept and delegate tasks appropriately.
• The post holder shall as necessary provide cover for and undertake duties of absent colleagues.

Please contact us if you would like any additional information or to arrange an informal visit.

Person specification

Qualifications

• • BSc Nutrition and Dietetics or relevant degree with post graduate diploma in dietetics
• • Health Professions Council registration for dietetics
• • Full driving license and daily use of car to visit numerous sites across the trust

• • Full member of British Dietetic Association

Knowledge/Experience

• • Comprehensive experience at undergraduate level or at band 5 of the core competencies within Dietetics.
• • Experience of working in mental health setting

• • Preferably with experience in NHS
• • Working with hospital or commercial caterers

Values

• Continuous Improvement
• Accountability
• Respectfulness
• Enthusiasm
• Support
• Responsive to service users
• Engaging leadership style
• Strong customer service belief
• Transparency and honesty
• Discreet

Skills

• • Understanding of professional and ethical issues.
• • Assessment, observation, evaluation and report writing skills.
• • Knowledge of current best practice in Dietetics.
• • Ability to work single handed with access to guidance from Dietetic colleagues on site or by telephone.
• • Ability to reflect and critically appraise own performance.
• • Positive and objective interpersonal skills.
• • Basic knowledge of health and social care legislation and guidelines e.g Department of Health documents, national clinical guidelines and application to Dietetic practice.
• • Awareness of research methods and audit skills to inform and evaluate practice.
• • Basic knowledge of the principles of clinical governance.
• • Basic knowledge of principles of health and safety and risk awareness.
• • Understanding of professional conduct and confidentiality.
• • Understanding of team dynamics.
• • Ability to build effective working relationships.
• • Effective personal organisational skills.
• • Portfolio of documented evidence of Continuing Professional Development.
• • Written and oral communication skills in English sufficient to communicate effectively with patients to gain consent and explain treatment interventions and gain information required for the patient’s medical/social history relevant to Dietetics.
• • Basic computer skills e.g word processing, email, internet skills and preferable experience of using electronic patient record systems. (EPEX)

• • Accurate anthropometric skills.
• • Experience of working in collaboration with other professions to deliver care.
• • Agencies to achieve agreed outcomes for individuals in delivery of treatment outcomes.

Functional skill

• Full driving license for Community working

Please ensure you check the email account from which you apply for all correspondence. All information regarding your application will come from apps.trac.jobs not NHS Jobs.

Only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we offer a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants who consider themselves to be disabled who meet the minimum (essential) criteria for the role in the person specification. If you would like your application to be considered under the Trust’s guaranteed interview scheme you can indicate this in the personal information section of your online application form.

Should you require a reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process please email [email protected] to ensure that measures can be put in place to support you.

We reserve the right to close any vacancy earlier than advertised in exceptional circumstances once we have received a high volume of applications.

The team can prevent any previous identity showing on the DBS Certificate, unless the applicant has a conviction under their previous details in which case this will need to be disclosed.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

Please be advised that the use of Artificial Intelligence on applications is monitored and if you choose to use this, you must declare this on your application form.