Do you know what a dietitian does?
Blog written by Melisa Ilkgoren, band 5 Dietitian at Whipps Cross.
Earlier on this year in June we celebrated “Dietitians Week”.
This year the focus was on what dietitians do, so we had a pop-up stand in the canteen and handed out questionnaires to staff members to understand what our colleagues think we as dietitians do at Whipps Cross. Based on the dietitian’s week questionnaire answers, we created the poster below outlining what staff members at Whipps Cross think dietitians do.
Want to know more about what we do?
Here at Whipps Cross, the dietetics team mainly focuses on inpatient care. We have a team of nine inpatient dietitians and four support workers covering the inpatient services.
We also have an outpatient diabetes dietitian and an outpatient IBD dietitian. We cover various inpatient wards such as OPS, gastroenterology, endocrinology, stroke, surgical and orthopaedics.
We receive a range of referrals daily for patients who struggle to meet their nutritional needs. A few examples include patients who require alternative feeding (e.g. nasogastric feeding or PEG), patients with grade 3/4 pressure ulcers, patients at risk of refeeding syndrome and significant weight loss.
We work closely with the MDT and advise patients on food fortification, nutritional supplements or enteral feeding/TPN to prevent weight loss and meet nutritional needs. We also advise patients with special diets such as allergy, post op diet, renal diet and low fibre diet for patients post bowel surgery.
When patients are discharged from the hospital, we ensure that we inform the relevant services as required. For example, we refer or handover to community dietitians, update the GP and request supplement prescriptions. We also liaise with care homes and patients’ next of kin to gain further information and handover information.
As a team, we hope to share knowledge on our role in the hospital and how we can support the MDT to optimise the quality of patient care. If you’d like to find out more about what a dietitian is, head to the British Dietetic Association website and have a happy reading.