Dietetic Assistant Practitioner

This is a fantastic opportunity for an enthusiastic and motivated person to join our team as a Dietetic Assistant Practitioner.

You will join the friendly, established team of Dietitians, Dietetic Assistant Practitioners (DAPs) and Dietetic Assistants (DAs) at an outstanding Trust. You will be based at either North Tyneside or Wansbeck Hospital but will be required to work Trust wide at times to meet the needs of the service.

This post is ideal for an experienced Dietetic Assistant looking for progression.

Main duties of the job

The main duties of the post will include assisting the dietitians with the ongoing provision of nutrition support. You will be an active member of the team and play a vital role in patient service delivery, education and resource development.

You will have a caseload of patients in a variety of settings including face to face and telephone outpatient clinics, and travelling to patients own homes and care homes. You will be required to liaise with dietetic colleagues, staff on the ward or in the community as well as patients, relatives and GP practices.

You will also be expected to support the dietitian in provision of education/training sessions to patients or staff.

The post holder will:

• undertake clinical tasks to support the Dietitian (nutritional assessment, management and review of patients) in the acute setting to promote and embed the importance of nutritional assessment and care plan implementation.
• manage a caseload of patients allocated by the Dietitian, working without direct supervision and undertaking a variety of delegated clinical and nonclinical tasks, in accordance with agreed guidance/care pathways.
• Support the Dietetic Assistant within this team

We manage three major locality hospitals at North Tyneside, Wansbeck and Hexham, plus a number of smaller community hospitals covering one of the largest geographical areas of any NHS trust in the country. Leading in innovation and quality –state of the art Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, the first of its kind in England. Do you want to work in one of the best performing NHS organisations in England? Work in an organisation that supports its staff and focuses on staff experience as much as it does the experience of its patients? You can live and breathe in an area that has the cleanest air, cost effective living, great nightlife, some of the best schools with a wealth of history available on your doorstep. Sound too good to be true? Well it isn’t, this is what you get when you work for Northumbria Healthcare, this is the Northumbria Way! Please read ‘applicant guidance notes’ before submitting your application.

To work independently as part of the Nutrition and Dietetic team under the guidance of the registered dietitians, assisting qualified dietetic staff, clinically and administratively to ensure a quality service provided, after a period of competency based learning.

The department is based over 3 sites- North Tyneside, NSECH and Wansbeck General.

The service is split into 5 teams – clinical, diabetes, community, paediatrics, and admin. We have Dietitians, Dietetics Assistants, Nutritionist, Nutrition Nurses and Admin staff as part of our wider team.

Undertake a variety of clinical tasks to support the dietitian’s delivery of nutritional care to patients (nutritional assessment, management and treatment of patients). This could be in a variety of settings - acute, community, etc.

Manage own caseload of patients allocated by the supervising dietitian, working without direct supervision and undertaking a variety of delegated clinical tasks, in accordance with agreed guidance/care pathways.

Undertake a variety of non-clinical tasks to support the Dietetic Service.

Assist in departmental audits collecting and collating data.

To role model compassionate and inclusive leadership in order to shape the creation of a collective leadership culture within the trust. This means demonstrating a consistent leadership style which (a) engages, enables and empowers others (b) uses coaching to promote ownership of learning and quality improvement and (c) facilitates team working and collaboration within teams / departments and across organisational boundaries.