Name: Rebecca Little
Job title: Highly Specialist Dietitian – Inpatient Team Leader
Age: 35
Qualifications: BSc (Hons) Food, Nutrition and Health; Postgraduate Diploma in Dietetics
Why did you decide to become an AHP? I always knew I wanted to care for people and I love food! The two came together when I worked with a dietitian on work experience during my undergraduate degree and I realised a career as a dietitian was the one for me.
How did you train for your role? After completing my undergraduate degree at the University of Huddersfield I went to Leeds Metropolitan University (now Leeds Beckett University) and completed a two-year Postgraduate Diploma in Dietetics.
Length of time in role: Four years in my current role as inpatient team leader, critical care and enteral feeding specialist dietitian.
Length of time at BTHFT: 11 years – I have worked here since I qualified in 2008 in a range of settings from diabetes to oncology and surgery.
What do you do? On critical care I develop individualised care plans for patients, which usually involves nasogastric tube feeding. I review these patients throughout their stay in critical care. I am part of the Trust’s Enteral Nutrition Team, and see patients requiring complex nutritional decisions and assess them for longer term artificial feeding. I also line manage three dietitians and a dietetic assistant practitioner.