Nutrition & Dietetics Service

Dietitians at North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT) provide both an inpatient and outpatient service.

Inpatient services

Our inpatient team is made up of dietitians who work within North Bristol NHS Trust providing a dietetic service to all wards.

The service is available between 8:30am - 4:30pm Monday to Friday.

• If you are an inpatient and your care team thinks you would benefit from seeing a dietitian, they will refer you directly.
• If you are an NBT health care professional and want to refer an inpatient to the nutrition and dietetic service, please do so via ICE.

Malnutrition is common in hospital patients and it’s important that it’s identified and treated early to reduce recovery time and complications. Each patient should be screened for malnutrition risk on admission to hospital and weekly throughout their stay. At NBT, we use the BAPEN Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST).

We use a range of assessment techniques to devise and review nutritional plans for patients. The aims of treatment are to improve nutritional status or symptoms to aid recovery.

Outpatient Services

Outpatient clinics are run at Southmead Hospital Bristol and Cossham Hospital where adult patients can be treated for conditions under a range of different specialties including:

• Gastroenterology
• Neurology
• Diabetes
• Bristol Bariatric Service
• Inherited Metabolic Conditions
• Renal
• Diet and Cancer

For more information click on the relevant specialty above to find out more.

If you are a clinician and want to refer a patient to a specialist outpatient clinic please view Nutrition & Dietetics – For Clinicians.

Community Services

• Patients who continue to need support to increase nutritional intake following discharge from hospital will be referred to the Community Nutrition and Dietetic team if appropriate. Read more information about their services.
• Patients who are being fed through a feeding tube (enteral feeding) will be referred to the Home Management Service (HMS). HMS will make arrangements to deliver feed products at home and to monitor progress. This service covers all of Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset.
• If a patient requires specialist dietetic input, the ward dietitian will arrange follow up through the GP or book directly into clinic.
• If you have never seen a dietitian and think that you need to, you can ask your GP, practice nurse or hospital consultant to refer you depending on the nature of your condition.
• If you have seen a dietitian at North Bristol Trust in the past, you can telephone the dietetics department directly and ask if you would need a referral.

Patient Handover for Clinicians

Inpatient handovers

If you are a dietitian and your patient has been transferred to NBT, please ring the department on 0117 4145428 to hand over.

Please note that University Hospitals Bristol also provide inpatient care to patients in the Bristol area.

Community handovers

If a patient has been discharged to the Bristol community, please contact the community team to handover.

If the patient has been discharged to the Bristol community and is receiving enteral nutrition, please contact the Home Management Service to handover.