What do dietitians do?

Dietitians are able to provide one to one specialist advice for patients on:

• weight management
• diabetes - Including referral into the intermediate diabetes care team
• enteral tube feeding – provided by the home enteral nutrition (HEN) team
• infant and children’s nutrition
• nutrition support for malnutrition
• gastrointestinal problems
• food allergy and intolerance
• and other diet related problems.

Dietitians work with different healthcare professionals to ensure patients receive the best possible care. This may be, but not exclusively, speech and language therapists, community matrons, the learning disability team, school nurses and health visitors.

Dietitians are involved in developing nutrition guidelines and policies and are involved in providing training for other healthcare orofessionals to ensure they are kept up to date on nutrition.

Nutrition advice and support is also available for nursing and residential homes in Dorset, either via telephone or face to face or through training opportunities.

The community and specialist dietetic service may also take part in local health promotion events such as the trust's health and wellbeing forum, falls preventions and bone health events.