Advanced Dietitian - UGI Cancer Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a dynamic, enthusiastic, hardworking, and motivated Dietitian, with NHS experience, ideally in UGI cancer, to join our friendly and welcoming team of Dietitians and Dietetic Assistants on a fixed term basis to cover a maternity leave. The successful applicant will support the provision of nutritional care to those with UGI cancers covering oesophageal, gastric and HPB. This is a new and expanding service, so you will be instrumental in developing Dietetic pathways, including for those with a palliative diagnosis.

You will continue work already underway with establishing systems for assessing, monitoring, and measuring outcomes, providing high quality, evidence-based advice and education to our patients. You will work closely with the UGI Cancer Nurse Specialists and the wider multi-disciplinary teams within the hospital and at the specialist centres, as well as having local Dietetic Assistant and Admin support. We have another Advanced UGI Cancer Dietitian in the team, so you would work jointly with them to deliver and develop the service.

A flexible approach to day-to-day tasks is required, in order to meet the demands of the service. Our philosophy is to keep the patient at the heart of everything we do. We look for people who are willing to go the extra mile. The successful applicant will be a good team player but be able to work individually as well, being flexible, reliable, and conscientious, self-motivated, and forward thinking as well as having excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

Comprehensive clinical dietetic knowledge and recent clinical experience particularly in complex enteral feeding, use of modified diets and fluids and managing effects of anti-cancer treatments are essential. Teaching skills, experience of multi-disciplinary team working and experience in and enthusiasm for service improvement and clinical audit are vital. Reporting on nutritional outcomes will be required. There are protected audit sessions within the Trust and staff are encouraged to make use of these.

The successful candidate will:

• Deliver a high standard of evidence-based care.
• Be confident in their assessment and decision making.
• Participate in the discharge planning process.
• Supervise Dietetic Assistants, Band 5 and 6 Dietitians and students on clinical placement.
• Have significant postgraduate experience as a band 6/7 Dietitian.
• Have the ability to work flexibly and adaptably to changing working patterns across our sites.

Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust serves a population of over 600,000 with a workforce of over 9000 dedicated and skilled staff across 21 sites. We strongly believe that the communities we serve should all have access to Five Star Patient Care.

KEY DUTIES

• To work within Trust clinical guidelines, HCPC and Registrant Body guidelines and to have a working knowledge of national and local standards and monitor own and others quality of practice against these.
• To work in secondary care in a variety of hospital settings and the patient’s own homes.
• To demonstrate as appropriate to role highly developed physical skills for assessment and treatment of patients eg dexterity, co-ordination, palpatory and other senses.
• To deputise for senior staff in leading specific team.

CLINICAL & PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES

• To communicate complex patient and service-related information effectively to Health and Wellbeing and local authority colleagues and third sector agencies.
• Use complex communication skills and knowledge when working with patients, their families and other provider agencies.
• To involve the patient and the family/carers in all relevant discussions about their management and decisions that are made about treatment techniques and facilitating patient involvement in the planning, development, delivery and evaluation of the service.
• To assess capacity, gain valid informed consent and have the ability to work within a legal framework with patients who lack capacity to consent to treatment.
• Delivering high level and complex triage, clinical assessment, diagnostics, treatment and evaluation of the needs within the trust.
• Providing leadership; promoting a learning culture for colleagues and other agencies; leading service innovations and demonstrating high level problem solving.
• Ensuring excellence in service delivery through personal and service development, underpinned by evidence-based practice and research, embedded in the quality assurance agenda.
• Driving innovation; managing the change process to ensure your service continues to be flexible and proactive to reflect the needs of the trust.
• To triage patients with complex needs.
• To undertake complex clinical assessments of patients/service users within sphere of advanced practice.
• To determine a clinical diagnosis and make high level decisions regarding appropriate treatment/care plans.
• Implement complex care/interventions according to clinical need.
• Evaluate complex care/interventions based on evidence from clinical outcomes and best practice.
• To provide advanced clinical advice, support and training to patients/service users, families, carers and professional colleagues to improve their journey and their health and wellbeing.
• To be professionally accountable for all aspects of own work including the management of patients in your care.

ADMINISTRATIVE RESPONSIBILITIES

• To maintain accurate, comprehensive and up to date documentation, in line with legal and departmental requirements, and communicate assessment and treatment results to the appropriate disciplines in the form of reports and letters.
• To collect appropriate data and statistics for the use in the review of the service delivery.
• To use appropriate information technology skills for communication when required.

TEACHING & TRAINING RESPONSIBILITIES

• To deliver relevant, evidence-based training to patients, families, carers and trust staff.
• To provide specific training as required to the patient, family, carers and other members of the multidisciplinary team on the clinical and therapeutic management of an individual to support their health and wellbeing.
• To supervise and performance manage a range of clinical and non-clinical staff (including students) as required to do so.
• Taking into account the breadth of knowledge, skills and experience held and required.
• To attend and contribute to local and national conferences and special interest groups within sphere of practice.
• To maintain own CPD by keeping abreast of any new trends and developments, and incorporate them as necessary into your work, supporting other staff with their CPD.

LINE MANAGEMENT/SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES

• To demonstrate leadership by means of: Delivering change within sphere of practice, when and where indicated, to improve service delivery.
• Influencing, motivating, supporting and enabling others to contribute towards the effectiveness and success of the trust.
• To provide high level advice and guidance in working with colleagues locally to ensure best practice across all disciplines in the assessment, treatment and long-term management of patients/service users within sphere of practice.
• To identify innovations and lead the implementation of new working practices in conjunction with patients/service users, health, wellbeing, local authority and third sector partners.
• To take responsibility for their own high level and complex decision making and the decisions of their team which affect service delivery.

CLINICAL GOVERNANCE, RESEARCH & AUDIT

• Registered Practitioners are required to evidence maintenance of their registration with the relevant regulatory body and work to their Code of Professional Conduct.
• To benchmark current service delivery against local and national clinical guidelines and standards of care.
• To lead on current best practice, based on the benchmarking outcomes.
• To translate local and national guidelines and train staff to ensure they have the skills and knowledge required to deliver effective services.
• To measure and evaluate own work and current practices through the use of evidence-based projects, audit, research, statistical information and outcome measures and lead others in doing so.
• To network with practitioner colleagues within the trust and across the North West and Nationally, to learn together and share good practice.
• To interpret and implement quality assurance practices within own work situation.

This advert closes on Thursday 13 Mar 2025.