Dietitian

To provide specialist clinical Dietetic and nutritional expertise for highly complex patients across a diverse and challenging mental healthcare setting. This will include working across the high, medium, low secure division, including the Specialist Learning Disabilities services (Ashworth hospital, Rowan View, Rathbone and Whalley). To support the Principal Dietitian and contribute to the development and delivery of Dietetic services, including the trust wide Nutrition and Hydration and Obesity Strategy Strategy, Hospital Food Standards, and other health promotion activities linked with CQUIN and research. Contribution to production and review of relevant trust wide policies, procedures and guidelines and strategic planning and directions. To deliver regular training across all sites to all medical and catering staff. The role will involve liaising regularly with other healthcare professionals including nursing staff, doctors, Allied Health Professionals and visiting consultants., Professionally accountable for their own caseload. To deliver regular clinics and ward visits and group education sessions. To work autonomously making clinical decisions in a variety of secure mental health settings within a broad professional standards (Health Professions Council and Professional bodies) To complete and implement full dietary plans for the service user using the appropriate anthropometric, biochemical and medical screening and advice to identify their nutritional requirements. To ensure that the advice is tailored to the service users individual needs. To give expert advice around MUST in conjunction with appropriate care-planning. To make clinical and responsive decisions working across all the Secure services. To use advanced communication skills to motivate and negotiate with patients to comply with treatment programs and use empathy, reassurance and analysis to uncover social or psychological factors which may affect compliance in order to facilitate long term lifestyle changes. To provide nutritional expertise at multidisciplinary meetings including Patient Care Team meetings, case conferences and in discharge planning. (This includes advice on methods of feeding, e.g., naso-gastric tube feeding, enteral sip feed supplements.) To educate and support the care-team about the patients' diets and recommend appropriate remedial measures to correct nutritional deficiencies and achieve therapeutic goals., 1. To monitor MUST screening and manage new admissions to the trust, providing regular support to the medical staff and via input at care-team. To audit the MUST and patient care-plans and outcomes on a quarterly basis. 2. To support the lead Dietitian in design and implementation of nutritional policies and standards in line with evidenced based practice and in disseminating and reinforcing information across all the sites. 3. To regularly liaise with staff from Catering, looking at ways to improve the service -user experience. To support the catering staff and Catering Dietitian in implementing these changes and to keep staff updated via the trust wide Nutrition and Hydration and Hospital Food Strategy meetings. 4. To support the Lead Dietitian with the role of the Assistant Dietitians, including their supervision process. To be responsible for any student dietitians for a day at their manager's request to give them some insight into Special Hospitals and the specialist dietetic problems encountered there. ORGANISATIONAL 1. To liaise with Catering Department and Catering Dietitian regarding the provision and clear coding of therapeutic diets. 2. To adhere to the nutrition and Enteral Feeding Policies 3. To work collaboratively with dietitians from the other Special Hospitals in the development of dietetic services within this highly specialised area. 4. To be responsible for attending mandatory courses annually including C&R Breakaway techniques, CPR, Security and safeguarding etc. 5. To participate in annual individual performance review agreeing and achieving objectives. 6. Empathetic towards people with mental health needs and a forensic history. PROFESSIONAL 1. To be professionally and legally responsible and accountable for all aspects of own work, including the management of patients in your care. 2. To liaise with dietetic colleagues outside the trust to co-ordinate patient nutritional care. 3. To adhere to Trust and national security guidance for recording, storage, and communication of confidential records. 4. To be responsible for keeping up to date on relevant legislation e.g., restructuring of Allied Health Professions, changes to Mental Health Act, Clinical Governance issues and Nice Guidelines. 5. To meet with pharmaceutical representatives to keep up to date with the development of new products and to avail of professional services e.g., loan of feeding pumps, samples of new dietary products with their nutritional specifications. 6. To be responsible for remaining up to date in mental health dietetics, maintaining competence to practice, ensuring Health Professions Council registration and engaging in continuous professional development. 7. To attend relevant courses, both in-house and external, to enhance knowledge base and to keep up to date with both dietetic and mental health fields. Quality 1. To deliver education on nutrition-related topics to groups of patients and staff to manage diet-related illnesses and to promote nutritional wellbeing. 2. To report and highly complex dietary situations to. 3. To participate in regular professional supervision. 4. To provide expert advice to Health Promotion Management Team on nutrition issues. 5. To advise Catering staff on suitability of food provision to meet nutritional, therapeutic, cultural, religious and ethical needs of patients. 6. To communicate complex information to patients, overcoming barriers to understanding such as cognitive impairment, to ensure effective collaborative working between patient and healthcare team for achievement of treatment plan. 7. To participate in research and development for nutrition and dietetics. 8. To contribute to the development of evidence-based clinical standards and guidelines. 9. To develop computer skill by accessing in-house training. 10. To contribute to reviewing the nutritional advice and literature used in the hospital to ensure it is in line with current research, professional practice and consistent with other dietetic departments in the UK. GENERIC RESPONSIBILITIES FOR ALL STAFF All post holders will agree to:

• Commit to the vision of supporting Mersey Care in becoming a leading organisation in the provision of community services, mental health care, addiction services and learning disability care, and in doing so fully utilise their skills and experience to support the objectives of the Trust.
• Role model the values of the Trust - Continuous Improvement, Accountability, Respectfulness, Enthusiasm and Support- in all activities and interactions with employees, service users and other stakeholders.
• Challenge the stigma associated with mental health and learning difficulties.
• Comply with the Duty of Candour, defined by Francis as: 'The volunteering of all relevant information to persons who have or may have been harmed by the provision of services, whether or not the information has been requested and whether or not a complaint or a report about that provision has been made.'
• Work across professional and organisational boundaries to improve services for all.
• Maintain their specific knowledge base and develop new skills.
• Value the contribution of the patient/ service user voice.
• Operate within any organisational codes of practice or those from a relevant professional body.
• Respect equality and diversity across all areas of working practice and communications with staff, service users and other stakeholders.
• Take responsibility for the accurate and timely collection and recording of data and ensuring all personally identifiable information is protected and used only for the purposes for which it was intended.
• Comply with all health and safety legislation and local policies and procedures.
• Adhere to all organisational policies.
• Have knowledge and understanding of technology in the workplace which is sufficient to maintain their efficiency and also how technology can empower service users in a digital environment.
• Comply with the NHS Constitution in relation to the staff responsibilities that it sets out for NHS employees.
• Attend a one day Just and Learning & Civility and Respect training workshop.
• Be an ambassador for Just & Learning and Civility & Respect following the training.
• Positively advocate the just and learning culture within your team.
• Be a confident supporter and implementer of the Trust CARES Values including Civility & Respect within your team.
• Support their team/ services to create a positive environment for Just and Learning Culture.
• Participate in Just and Learning Culture events.
• Bring Just and Learning Culture updates/ information to the attention of team members and other MCT colleagues they work with.
• Support and encourage the sharing of concerns about the safety and quality of care with senior leaders with the aim of improving safety and quality.
• Actively participate in creating an open culture within your team so that concerns and difficulties can be discussed safely and respectfully.
• Speaking up in the event that they are exposed to incivility between colleagues in the workplace #iwillspeakup.
• Listening and understanding others who have concerns and taking a collaborative approach to work towards a solution to improve civility and respect.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We celebrate diversity and promote equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect. We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from ethnic minorities, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people that are under-represented in our workforce. Furthermore we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces personnel as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us. 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. 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. 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 Trust expects all post holders who require an enhanced DBS for their role subscribe to the DBS Update Service. You will be required to enrol for this service for a fee of £13 per year and maintain registration. Trans applicants who require a DBS check and do not want to reveal details of their previous identity can contact the DBS Sensitive Applications Team or email [email protected]) with their application number once they have completed their DBS application form. 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.

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. At the heart of all we do is our commitment to 'perfect care' - care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. 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.