Inspirational Story

Can you tell us about your role and the difference it makes to patient care?

My role as a Dietetic Support Worker is within Paediatric Dietetics supporting specialist dieticians from both an admin and clinical perspective to ensure we provide the best treatment of care for our patients.

A major part to this role is supporting my delegated caseload, which is providing nutritional care patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease whilst they continue to receive medical treatment. This will typically involve checking patient’s anthropometry, biochemistry results, analysing oral intake, providing advice and prescribing oral nutritional supplements if required.

Aside from this, there are other tasks included in my role to ensure efficient patient care such as maintaining feed stock levels for wards, ensuring discharged patients are provided with the correct equipment or developing nutritional resources and activities.

Assisting dieticians who specialise in a range of health conditions has made me acknowledge why Dieticians are so valuable within the healthcare service. I have been able to realise how the severity of nutritional problems within patients can be treated with appropriate dietetic input.

What attracted you to being a support worker?

From studying a Human Nutrition degree, I was attracted to this role as since starting as a Dietetic Support Worker, I have been able to utilise my knowledge and apply it to patients.

In addition, I am very lucky to work with a team where I can feel supported if I feel I need to develop my nutritional understanding in relation to paediatric dietetics. This can be achieved through 1:1 tutorials and training which is allowing me to develop my CPD.

Example tutorials I have previously undertook with Dieticians relate to behavioural feeding problems, cow’s milk protein allergy, constipation and reflux. I am proud to be in a role where I am constantly learning and taking on new knowledge.

How has training and development in your role helped you so far?

As a support worker, I have been able to attend courses held by the British Dietetic Association and take part in webinars which has not only helped to extend my nutrition knowledge but through these training programmes, I have been able to meet many dietetic support workers/dietetic assistants across the UK.

Furthermore, prior to carrying out patient reviews, I was able to seek training by paediatric dieticians within the department to ensure I was able to review to the highest standard. Training included being on the wards with the dieticians and shadowing their reviews.

Aside from this, I have been able to get involved in new dietetic projects, which has allowed me to develop my current research skills. One recent project has been an audit with the Paediatric Gastroenterology team.

The audit surrounded Liquid Nutrition Therapy (LNT) within IBD paediatric patients, evaluating if LNT has a profound effect symptomatically or from a biochemical perspective. My contribution to this audit involved analysing the stats. Continuing to develop research-based skills has boosted my confidence and broadened my horizon of getting involved in further research projects.

What are you most proud of in your role?

Since being a Dietetic Support Worker, I am proud to realise that the work I do makes a difference to individuals whether it is my colleagues or patients.

Knowing you can provide support for the nutritional treatment of the patients is very rewarding and gives me a sense of pride.

In addition, this role has made me realise the importance of dietetic support workers in the AHP service, as essentially we are the backbone to Dieticians ensuring we are assisting them in anyway so they are able to support their own complex caseloads.

What would you say to others to encourage more people to become AHP support workers?

If you have been looking for a role where it is rewarding, you are committed and you want to learn, I would definitely recommend you to become an AHP support worker.

I am very grateful to have started this role, as nutrition and paediatrics are two areas I am highly passionate about and being able to meet lots of little patient’s is a bonus to my day.

Pursuing this role has allowed me to grow and develop as an individual and I have been able to practice skills I now feel more confident in. You will work within a supportive team where you feel valued and appreciated, but have the opportunity to work autonomously within your role.

Aside from the serious work, I can always have a laugh with the team! Working with Dieticians and seeing the work they do has helped to confirm my decision in wanting to undertake a postgrad in Dietetics with the hope to become a Paediatric Dietician, which is another reason, why I am grateful for this role.