Why choose St Andrew’s Healthcare to further develop your career in Dietetics?

As a Dietitian at St Andrew’s Healthcare, you will be able to use and build on your core skills, apply these in a specialist area of practice and become a valued member of the multi-disciplinary team.

You will be welcomed by a dynamic, innovative and supportive dietetics team who work together to help individuals make healthier choices by:

• Listening to what's important to them
• Answering their questions on food and health
• Being part of their healthcare team, advising and training colleagues
• Communicating clear, relevant messages about nutrition
• Working with chefs on recipes, ingredients and menus with all meals being cooked freshly onsite in our main kitchens and specialist dysphagia kitchen
• Keeping up to date with research and new information.

St Andrew’s offers challenging and rewarding opportunities to enhance your skills and experience through working with a diverse group of patients, from adolescents to older age adults.

To find out more about working as a Dietitian at St Andrew's click on this link to see a short video featuring Beena Patel, one of our Specialist Dietitians. Beena also wrote an article for the September 2020 issue of Dietetics Today (The British Dietetic Association's membership magazine) which highlights the difference you can make when working in mental health. Click here to read more. 

Innovation

The St Andrew’s dietetic team have developed and validated a Nutritional screening tool (SANSI) which can be used as an alternative to the MUST tool to ensure the additional nutritional risks prevalent in mental health settings can be identified. This tool has been recognised by NHS England working groups as an appropriate alternative tool, and we have shared it with organisations across the UK and overseas. Click here for more information on SANSI (paper version), presentation and factsheet.

Our dietitians and nutritionists understand nutrition and food, and the impact it has on physical and mental health. The importance of staying a healthy weight in secure services was been recently highlighted in an NHS England 2019/20 CQUIN. As part of the Charity’s commitment to supporting patient’s physical health, the Dietetics team has produced comprehensive and engaging nutrition education resources including a 12 topic programme, healthy lifestyle workbook, factsheets, a recipe book and internal website as well as an online training module for staff.

Demonstrating leadership in Mental Health Dietetics

Promoting Dietetics in mental health care is important to us and we take opportunities to showcase our skills and the contribution we can make. Some examples of this include:

- Our recent article in the Northampton Chronicle showcasing how our diet plays a fundamental role to our mental health. You can read more about that here.

- S. Bailey & Dr E. Delmage, Identification and management of obesity in adolescents within mental health services, Faculty of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry annual conference, Edinburgh 2013

- N. Wolfe & A. Simmons-Roberts, Tackling weight management in a secure mental health service plus poster presentation. 3rd Health and Justice summit in London 2015

- E. Cooper & R. Forster, Positive about Nutrition – does nutrition have a role to play in patient recovery in a secure mental health setting? Workshop and poster presentation at the 4th Health and Justice summit in 2016

- G. Momi & R. Forster, Achieving and maintaining optimal nutritional status in elderly patients in a mental health setting (poster presentation) at 5th Health and Justice summit in 2017

- N. Wolfe & A. Simmons-Roberts, Best practice in managing obesity in secure mental health units. Primary Care and Public Health conference, Birmingham in 2018

Across our team we have active members of specialist BDA groups including the Mental Health Specialist Group and Obesity Specialist Group. We have committee members of the CAMHS Specialist Sub-group (membership) and National Forensic Dietetic Forum (joint chair) as well as team members involved in specialist working groups e.g. ARFID. We support our team to access peer supervision via groups such as the East Midlands eating disorder group and BDA branch meetings. Our registered Nutritionists are members of the The Association of Nutrition.

We have contributed to producing professional consensus guidelines on topics such as feeding under restraint.

St Andrew's Dietetics has hosted the BDA Mental Health Group 2-Day conference & AGM (2014) and delivered an external MDT workshop ‘Weight management: Sharing the challenges and solutions in mental health and learning disability services’ (2013).

Our team members have contributed to publications including;

Rowell A1, Long C, Chance L, Dolley O. Identification of nutritional risk by nursing staff in secure psychiatric settings: reliability and validity of St Andrew's Nutrition Screening Instrument. J Psychiatr Ment Health Nurs. 2012 Oct;19(8):722-8.

Haw C. & Bailey S. (2012) Body mass index and obesity in adolescents in a psychiatric medium secure service. J Hum Nutr Diet. 25, 167-171.

N. Wolfe & A. Simmons. Mental Health versus Physical Health. Complete Nutrition Vol 14, No 1 Feb/Mar 2014 

A. Simmons-Roberts. Obesity Management in Mental Health. Complete Nutrition Vol 15, No 5 Nov 2015

Career development

We provide monthly individual clinical supervision, regular dietetic team meetings and training in this specialist field. There are opportunities to shadow experienced colleagues, to participate in continuing professional development (CPD) activities and to contribute to student training. We have links with University of Nottingham and University of Birmingham.

Would you like to be part of all this?

Our patients and your colleagues will expect you to live the St Andrew’s CARE values of Compassion, Accountability, Respect and Excellence every single day.

We expect you to show commitment to your clinical area and to the Nutrition and Dietetics team, contributing to shared working and excellent care. We also expect you to develop a sound knowledge of your patient population, their nutritional needs and effective interventions.