Are you interested in becoming a dietitian?
Are you studying science and are interested in food and nutrition and the impact they have on people's health and lifestyle?
If so, working as a dietitian or dietetic assistant maybe the role for you!
A dietitian is a specialist who gives people advice on food, health and nutrition.
We work in a variety of settings including hospitals, schools, clinics, prisons, the food industry and in gyms or sports clubs – once qualified you don’t have to stay in one setting either.
At the NCA we have had dietitians who have worked in our hospitals and then have diversified into working with private food companies and with professional sports teams – the world opens up.
You will need to enjoy working with people, want to use your knowledge and expertise to care for people who might be unwell in hospital or the community, or you can also work with healthy populations in public health settings, education or PR and the media – it is such a varied career!
As a dietitian you get opportunities to choose your own career journey and work alongside many other interesting professionals. You may want to have your own freelance company or be a social media nutrition expert or be a specialist working with children or adults with cancer.
The cost of training can be supported by the NHS learning support fund (£5000 non-repayable grant) that’s available to students applying for dietetics? Apply to the NHS Learning Support Fund (LSF).
Once trained as a dietitian you will always be in demand, there is a need for more dietitians. Once qualified you will be registered and regulated under the Health Professions Council and will start work on a salary of around £29,000.
If you want to learn much more about becoming a dietitian, go to The British Dietetic Association website. You can also listen to some dietitians speak about their career journeys and what they love about the job.
All our services support training student dietitians for their clinical placements. See the section below on student training for more information and read the case studies for some inspiration.
Useful links
Interested in:
Case studies - team members
Debbie
Paediatric Dietitian
Elsa
Advanced Specialist Dietitian and Team Lead
Yasmin
Professional Lead Dietitian
Joe
Specialist Community Dietitian
Audrey
Advanced Clinical Dietitian
Case studies - students
Maryam
Third year placement student
Anastasija
MSc Dietetics Student
As an NCA dietitian you will work within a hospital or community team within one of our four care organisations in Salford, Oldham, Bury or Rochdale.
We provide acute and community, adult and paediatric services on wards, in clinics, in schools, GP practices, nursing homes and patient’s own residences. Across our departments there are opportunities to work in various specialities, in multidisciplinary clinical teams to develop your own knowledge and skills whilst developing as a professional within the NCA staff development programmes.
The NCA is an exciting place to be a dietitian.
Although we work in smaller teams at several different locations, we collaborate as a larger AHP Dietitian group to ensure we continually promote our profession, share best practice and be at the forefront of clinical dietetics.
Our varied teams and larger workforce numbers as a whole NCA dietetic team allows us to provide amazing opportunities for rotational posts, clinical shadowing, and internal career opportunities for our dietitians.
We are passionate about growing the profession – so come and see if the NCA is the place for you!
Our NCA dietitian teams all provide training for student dietitians. Across our departments, we provide a mixture of P1, P2 & P3 placements & have a capacity to take 12 or more students per year across the NCA individually or a few at a time. We currently have strong links with local Health education providers and have students from Chester, Manchester Metropolitan, Leeds and East Lancashire universities.
Working closely with our practice education facilitators and university leads ensures that we provide flexible, exciting training opportunities for both the undergraduate and postgraduate courses. We recognise that not everyone follows the traditional routes and are keen to support all ways into the profession. This includes the dietetic degree apprenticeship courses.
We receive really positive feedback from our students. Read the case studies for their views on how the NCA helped them in this chosen career.
Our aim is recruit and retain local dietitians and are proud to have encouraged some of our assistants to go onto train as qualified dietitians and we also support return to practice dietitians.
Our sites
Working within our community service settings you could be within either Paediatric or adult services, providing care to patients residing in Oldham, Bury, Rochdale or Salford.
Rochdale Infirmary
The Rochdale Infirmary team are a small but unique department that provides the opportunity to work in both adult community and acute settings they work across the community in Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale and also offer in–reach service to three wards on the Rochdale Infirmary site.
The team consists of 4 dietitians & one food and nutrition advisor who works in care and nursing homes.
Salford Royal Infirmary
Salford dietetic service consists of an acute team based at Salford Royal and a community team based at St. James house. It is our biggest team with 51 dietitians and 10 assistants across both services, working in the areas of neuro, renal, gastroenterology, CCU & trauma, nutrition support team, weight management, aging and complex medicine and metabolics.
Our community team see a wide variety of patients (both orally and enterally fed) in clinics, group sessions, nursing homes and their own homes. This team works at a speciality centre and prides themselves on being forward thinking.
Fairfield General Hospital (Bury)
Our team in Bury (Fairfield General) Hospital consists of 5 dietitians and 1 assistant, they provide services to the inpatients there including supporting many patients on the leading NCA stroke unit. They treat patients across various wards such as cardiology, respiratory and general rehab, and provide outpatient clinics.
They are a small friendly department who work closely with the multidisciplinary teams and have good links with wider services.
The Royal Oldham Hospital
The Royal Oldham Hospital has a team of 14 dietitians and 3 assistants working across varied wards including a 22 bedded critical care unit and a newly built specialist surgical centre. Oldham has our largest inpatient paediatric service provided on a large children’s ward and neonatal unit. As a team we embrace diversity with our dietitians coming from varying nationalities and cultures
Our community teams
Oldham community dietitian service is based at two locations.
The Oldham Paediatric Dietitian Team are based in the integrated care centre, with 4 dietitians providing expert care to children and babies. Their work includes enteral feeding (0-18 years), working with complex neurological patients, food allergies, restrictive eating and nutrition support with those children who are failing to grow. This team are proud to share workloads effectively to support each other whilst working closely with the multidisciplinary teams caring for paediatrics. Working here gives a great opportunity to build relationships with families under long-term care.
The Oldham Adult Dietitian Team are based in the Link Centre in Oldham. This service treats patients living in the community and residential and nursing homes with long term health issues such as neurological conditions. This team has Macmillan Dietitians dedicated to supporting patients with cancer and those receiving end of care support.
Bury community team are very unique, providing an all-age service, meaning as a dietitian at Bury you work with both adult and paediatric patients. It is a small friendly and approachable team with 5 dietitians in total who take pride in having a good sense of community. Several members of the team have flexible working arrangements in place to help support a good work-life balance.
Heywood, Middleton & Rochdale community team. We are most proud of how we help each other, working together as a team, including our colleagues within the Children’s Integrated Services (nurses, other AHPs etc). This allows the patient / families to get the best possible care and holistic outcomes.