Dietitian at Northern Health and Social Care Trust

The job at Northern Health and Social Care Trust

Dietitians assess, diagnose and treat diet and nutrition problems, translating nutritional science into practical advice and clinical treatment. On a hospital ward that can mean calculating and recommending tube or intravenous feeding, managing refeeding risk and reviewing biochemistry; in the community it can mean supporting people with diabetes, coeliac disease, food allergy, kidney disease, cancer or eating disorders. Dietitians also run group education, train other staff, work in public health and research, and advise industry and government. People of all ages with medical conditions affected by diet — including digestive, kidney, metabolic and swallowing disorders, malnutrition, food allergy, obesity and eating disorders — as well as healthy populations.

At an integrated care organisation such as Northern Health and Social Care Trust, that work means a caseload that can cross the ward, the outpatient clinic and the patient’s home inside a single organisation, because acute and community services sit under one employer. Rotations can follow the pathway rather than the building, so you can see the same patient group in hospital and at home without applying for a different job. Across the profession as a whole, dietitians work in settings including NHS acute trust, intensive care and ward-based services, community and GP practice, renal and oncology services and eating disorder services — an organisation of this type will run some of those services and not others, which is why two posts with the same job title in the same city can be very different jobs.

Pay is not an employer decision. Agenda for Change is negotiated nationally and set separately in each of the four nations, so Northern Health and Social Care Trust pays band 5 exactly what every other NHS employer in Northern Ireland pays it: £31,049 at the bottom of the band on the 2025/26 scale. For context, median full-time pay across all occupations in Northern Ireland was £37,052 in 2025. What genuinely differs between two employers is the caseload, how rotations are structured, how much protected time you get for supervision and continuing professional development, how much band 6 progression is built into the establishment, and how far you travel between sites. Those are the questions worth asking at interview.

This page states no figure specific to Northern Health and Social Care Trust because none is published in the open data. When the workforce and staff survey feeds include this organisation, the establishment size, the response rate and the theme scores will appear above.