NHS Lanarkshire’s new neonatal dietetic service held a launch event in the sanctuary at University Hospital Wishaw earlier this year which incorporated education sessions and a ‘bake for BLISS’ cake sale, raising an amazing £282.
The new service consists of two whole time equivalent (WTE) dietitians who provide a service for neonatal infants across Lanarkshire. Dietitians who fill the roles are Louise Gibson, Pamela Caldwell, Fiona Midwinter and Lauren Spendlove.
Neonatal registered dietitian nutritionists are critical members of the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) team due to their unique skillset of growth assessment, nutrition evaluation and implementation of nutrition best practices (1).
Optimal postnatal nutrition and growth have wide-ranging benefits such as decreased hospital length of stay and longer-term benefits including improved neurodevelopmental outcome and better socioeconomic status (2).
Louise Gibson, neonatal dietitian, said: “The new service provides cover for inpatients in the neonatal intensive care unit, special care baby unit), transitional care unit and the paediatric wards if infants are readmitted.
“Nine neonatal dietetic Near Me and telephone clinics are run per month to review outpatients and cover is also provided to some neonatal consultant led specialist multi-disciplinary team (MDT) clinics”.
The service is establishing quality improvement projects, working collaboratively with a wide variety of its MDT colleagues across Lanarkshire to improve outcomes for neonatal infants.
The service is also working alongside dietitians across Scotland to develop ‘one for Scotland’ guidelines.
For more information, or to contact the team, email dietetics.neonatal@lanarkshire.scot.nhs.uk
1. Merlino Barr, S., Hand, R. K., Fenton, T. R., & Groh-Wargo, S. (2023). The Role of the Neonatal Registered Dietitian Nutritionist: Past, Present, and Future. ‘Clinics in perinatology’, 50(3), 743–762. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clp.2023.04.010
2. Mustapha, Moriam & Wilson, Kate & Barr, Sybil. (2021). Optimising nutrition of preterm and term infants in the neonatal intensive care unit. Paediatrics and Child Health. 31. 38-45. 10.1016/j.paed.2020.10.008.
