Nutrition and dietetics

Our nutrition and dietetics team offers adult and paediatric services, for both inpatients and outpatients.

Adult services include oncology, gastroenterology, stroke, diabetes, woman and gynecology, medicine for the elderly, orthopaedics, surgical, critical care, endocrine, renal, cardiology, general medicine, respiratory as well as mental health.

Paediatric services include diabetes, allergy, general paediatrics, neonatals and critical care.

The team offers a seven day service for adult services, with core working time 8.30am – 5pm Monday to Friday and 9am – 2pm Saturday and Sunday.

Acute stroke dietetics care

The dietitians on the Acute Stroke Unit are responsible for providing nutritional support for patients who are unable to meet their nutritional requirements after a stroke, due to increased requirements following a stroke, swallowing difficulties, reduced appetite or impaired ability to feed themselves. Patients may require food and fluids with a modified texture, oral nutrition supplements or artificial nutrition support via enteral tube feeding or parenteral nutrition.

We work closely with the MDT acute stroke team, speech language therapists, physiotherapists and occupational therapists throughout the patient’s treatment and rehabilitation to help meet their needs while on the ward and also to plan ahead for their discharge home.

Critical care dietetics service

We provide a dietetic service to the Critical Care Unit. The dietitian individually assesses patients to meet their nutritional requirements and to achieve their nutritional outcomes. We operate a blanket referral system, and prioritise urgent patients. We work closely with the multidisciplinary team and discuss objectives and plans, alongside delivering education and training for critical care staff.

The Nutrition Team assesses and treats all patients requiring parenteral Nutrition across the Trust.

Care of the elderly dietetics service

We cover all Medicine for Elderly wards: Emerald, Pearl, and Topaz wards.

We identify patients who are or at risk of being malnourished, and put measures in place to optimise their nutrition for recovery. We aim to prevent the consequences of malnutrition, which include increased susceptibility of infections, risk of falls and fractures, number of hospital re-admissions and longer stays in hospital.

We base our interventions on the patient’s anthropometry measures, clinical status and nutrition-related problems, as well as their lifestyle, preferences and support at home.

We communicate with GPs, Community Dietitians, Care homes and Nursing homes to ensure appropriate care is continued after discharge.

Dietetic services for oncology

Our team of Macmillan oncology dietitians and dietetic support worker provide specialist dietetic advice and support to patients with a cancer diagnosis, both in the inpatient and outpatient (chemotherapy and radiotherapy) setting.

The specialist dietitians help to prevent and treat common nutritional symptoms that occur in cancer and cancer treatments and provide individualised advice on how to maintain an optimal weight and diet during treatment and recovery.

We work closely with the MDT to optimise nutritional support for our patients and aim to achieve excellent outcomes.

Children's dietetics service

We deal with premature infants, term infants, children and adolescents on our Rainbow Ward and Neonatal unit (we are also able to review patients on PAU or in Children’s Outpatients Department on request).  We provide nutritional assessments, develop nutritional related diagnosis and implement treatment plans based on the individual’s nutritional needs. The dietary management plan will be explained and discussed with children and their families and advice given on how to implement this at home. We also communicate and contact GPs, health visitors, school nurses and other health care workers to support children and their families once home. 

Childrens diabetes dietetian's service

The Paediatric Diabetes Specialist Dietitian assesses and treats all children and young people with the different types of diabetes. Both and inpatient and outpatient service is provided. Patients and their family/carers are taught Level-3 carbohydrate counting training to newly diagnosed patients with T1 diabetes. Disease-specific advice is also provided  to children and young people with other types of diabetes. The dietitian assesses a child, develops nutritional diagnosis, designs and implements dietary management plans and monitors growth and nutritional interventions.

Chilldrens dietetic outpatient service

The children’s general outpatient dietitians see a wide range of conditions including: growth faltering, poor weight gain, selective eating problems, food allergy or intolerance (if multiple/severe food allergy they would need to be referred to our specialist allergy service), coeliac disease, hypercholesterolemia, obesity/overweight, mineral/vitamin deficiencies and constipation.

Dietetics service for people having surgery

We provide a service to all the surgical wards, individually assessing patients pre and post-surgery including for colorectal, orthopaedic and gynaecological procedures. We provide individualised nutritional treatment plans. We aim to optimise their nutritional status and ensure adequate energy and protein intake and advise patients on how to achieve this either with oral nutrition support or with enteral tube feeding. Patients may also need education on fibre intake, pancreatic enzyme replacement and liquid diets. We work closely with all MDT surgical teams and other health professionals such as the enhanced recovery nurse and the stoma nurses. We also provide education and training to the surgical including nurses and doctors.