Bank Dietitian - Band 7

Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust

The closing date is 31 December 2025

JOB SUMMARY
- About the Role:

To work as an autonomous specialist Dietitian and provide a comprehensive and effective paediatric dietetic service to Basildon Hospital patients and carers. To manage a complex paediatric clinical caseload providing specialist dietetic advice, support, clinical assessment and education to children. To lead responsibility for the provision of Nutrition and Dietetic care to children with diabetes, and lead on service improvement in this specialist area.

To work very closely with the diabetes multi‑disciplinary team in providing a specialised dietetic service to children/young people and their families, regarding diabetes management, and to ensure the Trust meets the dietetic elements of Best Practice Tariff. To provide assessment, management and ongoing education antenatally for expectant mothers with pre‑existing Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, or gestational diabetes, working closely with the multidisciplinary team.

To provide assessment, management and ongoing education for paediatric diabetes patients, and their families. To provide specialist expertise to support the self‑management of children with diabetes on pump therapy.

Communication:
To be responsible for ensuring that patients and carers have consented prior to dietetic intervention in line with professional guidelines. To have the ability to utilise highly developed communication and teaching skills to communicate highly complex information in an understandable form to the diverse population in the hospital where there may be significant barriers to understanding e.g. impaired cognition and difficulties in speaking.

To communicate effectively with patients and carers to ensure understanding of clinical condition and the individual dietary management plan and encourage their active participation throughout the care process. This will frequently involve clients/carers who have complex emotional, physical and psychological problems. To undertake dietetic consultations within a framework of behavioural approaches including negotiation, persuasion and motivational interviewing skills. To represent the dietetic service and individual patients at the multi‑disciplinary team meetings, to ensure the delivery of a co‑ordinated service and to integrate dietetic treatment into the treatment programme.

This will include discussion of patient care and patient progress and ensure collaborative working within the multi‑agency setting, as required.

See JD for full description

With a workforce of approximately 15,000 staff, we can now do more and go further in delivering health services to our local communities.

Our ambition is to deliver excellent local and specialist services, to improve the health and well‑being of our patients, and provide a vibrant place for staff to develop, innovate and build careers.

Patients will experience improved care as well as fewer delays and cancellations. We are able to provide more once‑in‑a‑lifetime specialist care region‑wide. With our new trust size will come more opportunities for development, research, networking and innovation.

We aim to make the most of our skills and experiences so we can become the best we can be. As one organisation we will recruit the finest and retain more specialist staff due to more employment opportunities across our Trust.

Clinical Duties:
To provide evidence based specialist dietetic input to multidisciplinary paediatric diabetes clinics, multidisciplinary antenatal clinics, joint nurse/dietitian‑led diabetes clinics, dietitian‑led diabetes clinics in line with best practice criteria. To see children and young people as inpatients with newly diagnosed diabetes. To undertake comprehensive diet/lifestyle assessments and formulate individualised patient management/treatment plans to optimise blood glucose levels within the hospital or home/school environment, as required.

To work autonomously to provide expert dietary advice to clinicians, team members, patients and their families, education and social care regarding…