Keep up to date with the latest goings on of our Dietetic Workforce Development Programme:
February
Work continues on our projects across our Dietetic Workforce Development Programme.
This month saw our Future Dietitian report be sent to design to be finalised – watch this space for when it launches!
We also began to design our business case templates and finalise our new website content as part of our work on producing Advanced Practice career progression resources. These new resources will be held on our updated Advanced Practice webpages, which will be launching over the next few weeks!
As part of our work producing a scoping review on digital dietetic innovation, we met with NHS digital and discussed the progress of creating new terms and their availability and use. We also agreed on new terms to be used and will be sharing these once we have finalised our report on the project.
Our work on Practice-based Learning saw us send our finalised Practice-based Learning Innovative Guidance document to design – this report will be published later this year as part of our revamped education webpages! We continued to plan and promote Practice-based Learning as part of our promotion and campaign for innovative Practice-based Learning. We also finalised the content and continued to design our web pages which will be launched later this year, with brand new content for both learners (students) and Higher Education Institutes.
Work on the feasibility of a dietetic assessment tool saw us send the final report to design in order to summarise our findings in our final Dietetic Workforce Development Programme report.
Our work on looking at the demand and capacity within dietetics saw us receive a pre-registration data set and data analysis. This data will be sent over to design for updated infographics, keep an eye out for when these will launch later this year!
As part of our projects, we are dedicated to driving improvements in equality, diversity and inclusion within pre-registration and careers, as part of this project we have confirmed a workshop facilitator for internal BDA staff, we have developed new content for an EDI webpage which will launch alter this year and finalised our cultural and faith events calendar which will launch alongside our new EDI webpage.
Our campaign on promoting dietetic roles across the NHS and Social Care services continued as we gathered written case studies, recorded video case studies and planned the launch of the campaign for later this year.
This month saw our preceptorship survey close and we began to analyse our findings and write up our report as part of our project to review the implementation of the BDA Preceptorship guidance.
We continued to collate case studies via engagement with stakeholders as part of our work on developing exemplar of early dietetic careers and best practice. These case studies will be shared on our new webpages once launched.
As part of our work on return to practice we hosted our webinars for potential returned and dietetic managers which are now uploaded on our webpages.
We completed our project on developing dietetic resources to support the education. Scope of practice and pastoral guidance of international recruits, this project will launch alongside our new education webpages.
Our Dietetic Support Workforce project saw us close out framework consultation and we began to review the consultation outcomes. We finalised our vision statements and drafted our FAQs which were drafted and shared with organisations to review.
Work on our neonatal education route continued as we worked on the development of new modules, web content and case studies.
For our dietitians in mental health services, we began to plan our communications and collated case studies. We also planned our upcoming webinar series for Mental Health Awareness Week in May – register now!
As part of our primary care project, we finalised the communications strategy for our awareness campaign, sent our roadmap evidence template resources to be proofread and began to finalised our report.
Our work on advancing research and practice opportunities continued as we began to prepare for our research forum.
January
As the new year started, we made a number of updates on our projects as part of our Dietetic Workforce Development Programme.
This month we began to draft our Future Dietitian report after analysing the results from our recent survey.
Our work on Advanced Practice career progression resources saw us draft example job descriptions, prepare business case templates and update our new webpages which will be launching soon.
As part of our scoping review on dietetic digital innovation we have collated the findings from our pilot study and shared them with those that were involved in the study via a webinar. We have now begun to develop our report which will be shared in the future.
Our work on Practice-based Learning (placements), saw our Practice-based Learning Innovative guidance document be finalised for content and go to design. We also continued working on our communications plan and the development of resources as part of our promotions campaign for innovative Practice-based Learning, along with this we began to finalise the drafts of our new webpages that will be launched soon – watch this space!
As part of our work on demand and capacity we began to analyse our data and link in with HEE as part of this project. Going forwards we will create new infographics that reflect the dietetic workforce and those studying dietetics.
Part of this Workforce Development Programme has been to drive improvements in EDI within pre-registration and careers. As part of this project we have developed a new EDI specific webpage which will be launching as part of our web section revamp soon!
We continued to collate case studies as part of our work to develop exemplar of early dietetic careers and best practice via engagement with our stakeholders. These case studies will be available on our new webpages.
We analysed our survey results as part of our return to practice project and began discussions about updating our webpages, which will take note from our survey findings.
Our work to support the education and scope of international dietitians saw us finalised our webpages, which will be launching very soon.
Our work for the dietetic support workforce saw us launch our Framework consultation. We help roundtable discussions for an FAQ document, our vision statement went to design, we began drafting a member’s scoping survey for roles and responsibilities, which will be sent out to members soon.
Our dietitians in mental health project saw the webinar series begin drafting. We also finalised our report and began to collate resources and plan the new web page.
As part of our primary care project we finalised the communications strategy for our awareness campaign. We began update and produce our new resources. Watch this space for our launch!
December
December was a busy month for our Dietetic Workforce Development Programme.
This month saw the data from our Future Dietitian survey analysed and infographic from the findings was produced.
Our Advanced Practice career progressions resources continued to steam ahead as we began to develop a number of different resources for the project for those interested in or already working in Advanced Practice.
Our scoping review for dietetic digital innovation saw us collate the findings from our report and share them with our internal teams.
The content of our Practice-based Learning Innovative Guidance document was finalised and sent for design, watch this space for the final product!
Our Practice-based Learning communications campaign continued with resources being developed and promoted across our BDA channels. Along with this our shared project for share Practice-based Learning shared resources webpage, where we continued to work with our communications team about the upcoming promotion of this webpage and the content that will be included on it.
We completed our feasibility study for our dietetic common assessment tool study and will analyse these findings and produce a report as the next stage of this project.
Our demand and capacity project saw us refresh our business intelligence document with the available data sets, going forwards on this part of the project we will analyse our data and produce our findings.
Work for our promotion of dietetic roles across the NHS and Social Care services continued as we collated case studies and materials for the project and we engaged with our BDA Specialist Groups to get involved with the project.
Our work on the review of the implementation of the BDA Preceptorship guidance continued as we shared our preceptorship survey with our members. We also linked in with the Health Education England preceptorship workstream as part of their advisory board and attended workshops.
The development of exemplar early dietetic careers and best practice project saw us invite our members to send in their case studies of their experiences either as a Preceptor or their experiences as early dietetic careers. We are still collecting case studies, so get involved!
As part of our return to practice project, we began the planning of our resources for those returning to practice. We also sent out our survey for those who have returned to practice or for those who work or manage returnees. If this is you then please complete our survey.
As part of our work to produce resources to support the education, scope of practice and pastoral guidance for international recruits, we began to design our webpage, which will launch in the coming weeks!
We continued to work on our support workforce project where we sent our vision statement for the project for design. We communicated to our members the upcoming consultations that will be taking place and our draft framework was reviewed.
Our neonatal education route project saw us update our project plan and begin to develop general and specific content for the project.
The mental health project continued with the development of resources beginning and plans for our webinar series began. Watch this space to get involved and sign up!
For our Primary Care project, we began to draft our updated webpages, including FAQs, infographics and job profiles. We also began to plan and develop or resources, including our ‘Day in the life of a First Contact Dietitian’ and its Level 7 reflection.
Our work on advancing research and practice opportunities continued as we began drafting content for our updated webpages, as well as report writing.
November
Work on our projects across our Dietetic Workforce Development Programme continued in November and we saw big developments across a number of our projects!
In November we closed our Future Dietitians survey where we will now be analysing the results and formulating our findings in a report.
Work on our resources for Advanced Practice continued as we proofed, designed and launched some of our brand-new resources. Check out our new case studies here!
As part of this project, we also began to develop our plans for a new section on the BDA website for Advanced Practice and we started to develop our draft templated for job plans, job descriptions and business case studies that are now with our Trade union team to be checked over.
Our scoping review work on digital innovation continued as we completed our pilot study work and developed our surveys to evaluate the outcomes for those that were involved on our pilot sites.
We steamed ahead with our Practice-based Learning projects where our innovation and guidance document were sent to be proofread and then on to design. Alongside this we continued to develop our webpages which will be launching next year!
Our communications campaign for innovative Practice-based Learning continued with new resources added to our webpage. We will continue to develop these resources throughout the project, so keep a look out!
We completed our feasibility report as part of our dietetic common assessment tool project and we confirmed a decision to develop a dietetic common assessment tool as part our 2023/24 education work programme.
As part of our work around demand and capacity we received our intelligence data and worked on the identification and preparation of additional data that is suitable for this project. Going forwards this data will be analysed and used to produce infographics for our website.
Our work on driving improvements in EDI within pre-registration and careers saw us begin EDI workshop preparations, including securing a facilitator and we continued to collate EDI resources for the BDA website.
As part of our work to promote dietetic roles across NHS and Social Care services we began to implement our project plan and brainstormed resources ideas. We also finalised the content for our website as part of our work on dietetic resources to support the education, scope of practice and pastoral guidance of international recruits.
Work on reviewing the implementation of the BDA Preceptorship guidance continued as we finalised our survey, produced our future article for DT and responded to the HCPC Preceptorship survey.
We continued to collate examples of preceptorship and mentoring as part of our work to develop exemplars of early dietetic careers and best practice. These examples will be developed into case studies.
Our work on return to practice continued as we developed the questions for our survey, produced our content for our future DT article and began to plan our resources that we will be developing as part of this project.
Our project for the support workforce saw us internally review our first draft of the support worker framework, we also asked our expert group to review and feedback on our vision statement. Our expert team worked on our myth buster resource, reviewed and feedback on our infographic and education and experience survey report too. We also began to develop a plan for the new support worker section of the BDA website.
The neonatal education route project saw us update our project plan and our project lead met with HEE to discuss the next steps of this project.
As well as this our dietitians in mental health services project saw us complete a plan of resources to be developed and future meetings were booked to keep up to date on these resources.
Our primary care project saw us confirm future webinar dates, draft a plan for our new website content, continue with resource development and update the guide to general practice.
As part of our work on advancing research and practice opportunities we continued to draft web content and we began to research and write reports on our work.
October
October saw the BDA steam ahead with progress on our Dietetic Workforce Development Programme.
This month we redistributed our Future Dietitian survey where we are reviewing our progress against the 2025 Future Dietitian Report published in 2017.
We planned the content for our presence at the Health Education England Advanced Practice Conference. We launched our band new Advanced Practice case study’s which you can read here.
Our work on producing a scoping review of dietetic digital innovation saw us produce our first draft of our guidance document and we began to prepare our new website content for this part of the project.
Work for leaners and HEIs continued with our communications campaign for innovative Practice-based Learning saw us develop new resources for non-clinical Practice-based Learning settings, check them out here. Our work on producing dietetic resources to support the education, scope of practice and pastoral guidance for international recruits continued as we developed our webpages and required resources and worked on the first draft of our findings.
The final draft to explore the feasibility of a Common Assessment Tool for those undertaking Practice-based Learning was discussed at our HEI meeting and we met to discuss progress of the tool.
Work on demand and capacity continued with us purchasing intelligence data and our design team began to prepare infographics for our new webpages.
Our work to drive improvements in EDI for pre-registration and within dietetic careers saw tour designer prepare resources for our webpages and we began to develop a best practice guidance document and we also met with EDI leads to explore and complete a gap analysis.
Alongside this work we also finalised our communication plan for our work on promoting NHS and Social Care careers. We also continued to collate case studies and prepared them for design as part of our work on developing exemplar dietetic careers and best practice.
Our work on reviewing the implementation of the BDA Preceptorship guidance continued as we finalised our survey plan and attended the HEE Preceptorship Advisory Group.
Our work for the dietetic support workforce continued as we developed our first draft of our framework, we also shared our education and experience survey with the workforce and drafted our report from the findings. We also began to devise our list of common myths from our survey results and discussions and finalised our project branding.
For our work on the neonatal education route, our project lead began to analyse our survey findings and began to identify the next steps for enhanced training. Our work for dietitians in mental health services saw us evaluate the information gathered from our roundtables and we began to draft our report and started our resource development for this project.
Our work on promoting Primary Care continued as we hosted additional roundtables for service leads and dietetic managers, we finalised our list of required resources and continued to develop these.
For our work on advancing research and practice opportunities we continued to generate our webpages and reviewed other AHP webpages to allow us to collate our existing resources and develop a gap analysis of our own webpages.
September
There were huge developments across each project as part of our Dietetic Workforce Development Programme.
In September we developed our communications plan, began to draft our resources and send these resources to our reference for review as part of our work to develop Advanced Practice career progressions resources.
Alongside this work we planned our presentations for the Health Education England Conference that is taking place in November as part of our work for Advanced Practice. The BDA will be presenting on 8 and 9 November between 12-1pm.
On 8 November we will be presenting to dietitians who are interested in Advanced Practice and want to learn more.
On 9 November we will be presenting to managers and Advanced Practice Trust leads where we will discuss all things Advanced Practice specific to dietitians.
Places are free and limited, sign up now to avoid disappointment.
Our work to produce a scoping review for dietetic digital innovation continued as we developed our training package for our pilot sites. We also supported the chosen sites with the pilot study as we continued to develop and organise the pilot.
We continued to steam ahead with our work surrounding Practice-based Learning. We continued to work on our innovative guidance document. We also produced a number of brand-new and exciting resources for both learners and those working in HEIs or developing non-clinical Practice-based Learning. Check out our new resources tab to see our new learner case studies, our International Practice-based Learning Provision for Dietetic Pre-registration Learners and our Guide to setting up non-clinical Practice-based Learning. Work continued on our development of the new content and design for our education and Practice-based Learning webpages, so watch this space!
We closed responses to our Common Assessment Tool survey and began to draft our feasibility report to present later this year. As part of our work for demand and capacity, we completed our EDI data analysis and began to develop our graphics to share with the workforce soon! We also continued to collate resources for our new EDI webpage and met with a HEI lecturer to review our webpage through its development. As part of this work, we also attended the final workshop ran by Council of Deans to feed into their EDI best practice document on race and equality.
Our internal BDA comms team met to discuss and plan our communications and video campaign as part of our work to promote dietetic roles across the NHS and Social Care services. Our work on developing example early dietetic careers and best practice work continues as we created a template for our Specialist Groups to complete and return back to us to be developed into resources and we also circulated a case study template to our membership. We also continued our work on developing resources to support the education, scope of practice and pastoral guidance for international recruits, including drafting and sharing a report, regularly meeting with our project lead to update on progress and continually providing support and guidance when required.
As part of our work to review the implementation of the BDA Preceptorship guidance, we agreed on our approach to the preceptorship workstream. We also drafted our questions for our survey regarding this project and attended the HEE Preceptorship Advisory Group and commented on draft principles and HCPC consultation questions.
Our return to practice project saw us recruit a project lead and we linked in with HEE and began to plan our resource development.
Work for the support workforce continued as we met with the BDA Trade Union to discuss job profiles. We drafted our survey on the education and experience requirements of the workforce and drafted our communications and launch campaign. Work on the first drafts of our frameworks began and we also produced a brilliant infographic that included some of the findings of our previous survey.
Our primary care project saw a number of developments this month. We produced four draft resources required by members, det up additional roundtables for service leads and dietetic managers to review and decide on further required resources. We also completed our communications plan for this project and drafted our new webpage layout!
For our advancing research and practice opportunities project, we began to develop our case study template to be distributed to our members, we also began to review and collate our existing resources and look at what was needed for our new research webpages.
Our neonatal project saw our survey distributed to members, with the findings collated and shared with the project lead. Alongside this our mental health project saw the project breakdown and reviewed by our consultant, as well as our survey shared with members and the findings collated too.
August
August saw a number of exciting updates across each project in our Dietetic Workforce Development Programme.
This month we launched our Future Dietitian survey which will be circulated to members until October. If you’d like to help us review the progress we’ve made against the recommendations in the 2015 Future Dietitian Report, complete our survey here.
Work steamed ahead on our education projects! We excitingly finalised branding on our Practice-based Learning project and continued to plan and produce resources for the project. We also finalised our International Placement Guidance. Alongside, our exciting Practice-based Learning work we also circulated our survey to HEIs on the feasibility of a Common Assessment Tool and received a brilliant response. We began to scope the needs of international recruits, identified the opportunities and challenges of international dietetic recruitment and continued our conversations with NHS managers and employers as part of our project to develop dietetic resources to support the education, scope of practice and pastoral guidance of international recruits.
Work on driving improvements in EDI within pre-registration and careers continued as we identified a BDA EDI lead, finalised designs on exciting resources for the project which will launch soon and continued discussions with relevant contacts.
We advertised our reference group to BDA members as part of our Advanced Practice project and met with the HEE Advanced Practice conference lead to discuss our presence on the day – watch this space for your invite soon! Along with this, we began to draft exciting and helpful resources for the project which we will be sharing with members over the coming months.
Discussions were held with dietitians as part of our Primary Care project where we were able to establish the resources needed to support those working in or wanting to work in Primary Care and a communications plan was developed to help promote this project.
As part of our dietetic digital innovation project, we developed and designed a training package for pilot sites and met with some of the sites and will be meeting with others over the next couple of months.
Our specific support workforce project saw us establish a forum to facilitate collaboration and cooperation for those involved in the project, we set in stone our ongoing meetings with the project lead, held our first project team meeting, met with the BDA Trade Union to discuss job profiles and continued on with our collection and analysis of background information.
As part of our work with the BDA Mental Health Specialist Group we sent out our survey to those working in mental health settings. As well as this our work with the BDA Paediatric Neonatal Specialist Sub-Group saw us send a survey on their behalf too, where we scoped the training needs of those working with neonatal patients.
Finally, as part of our work to advance research and practice opportunities within dietetics we continued to gather case studies of those who have had non-traditional placement experiences, completed our project work plan and finalised our communications strategy.
July
Throughout July our work on our survey to review the progress against the recommendations in the 2025 Future Dietitian report continued as we sent the finalised draft through our internal channels to be signed off.
We worked on the development of resources and a new web section for our Practice-based Learning project, where we continued to collect relevant content, reviewed the content of other AHP innovative methods, finalised our communications plan and shared it with our internal BDA communications team. We also finalised our survey on the feasibility of a Common Assessment Tool and continued on with our paperwork to ensure the project is delivered in time. Alongside this, as part of our dedication to driving improvements in EDI within pre-registration careers, we began discussions with other AHP education leads on the available resources that can be shared. Work continued on our communications plan to ensure that we are promoting the dietetic roles across NHS and Social Care services and as part of our dedication to developing exemplar dietetic careers and best practice, we continued to attend and participate in HEE’s preceptorship working group and we began to formulate ideas for case studies for the project.
Our work on advanced practice career progression resources saw us hold our first meeting with the project lead and we began our internal monitoring of the project to ensure we continue to work to our deadlines. We also agreed on our project plan and project lead for our Primary Care project and began to advertise working groups to help us establish required resources for the project and for those working in or hiring those working in Primary Care.
We continued our recruitment process to find a project lead as part of our Return to Practice project. We also supported our project lead with information of the work stream as part of our dietetic resources to support the education, scope of practice and pastoral guidance of international recruits, we also continued our conversations with NHS mangers and employers to support the project.
As part of our work to support the dietetic support workforce we appointed a subject matter expert and a project lead. We also organised our first expert meeting group, closed our survey which received 500 responses and continued to gather our background information to support the project.
Our work with both the Neonatal Specialist Sub-Group and the Mental Health Specialist Group, saw us identify project leads to undertake the work.
Gantt chart production and communications planning continued as part of our project to advancing research and practice opportunities. We drafted our advert to hear from learners that have been on non-traditional placement experiences including research.
June
June saw the BDA agree on the finalised draft of our Future Dietitian survey where we will review our progress against the recommendations made in the 2025 Future Dietitian report as we now at the half way point.
Our work on supporting the education and training of those wanting to become a dietitian saw us begin to collect relevant and exciting new content for our new web section. We reviewed the work of other AHP bodies and began working on our own innovative methods document. Alongside this we finalised our communications plan for the upcoming Practice-based Learning project where we will be launching a whole new range of resources for learners and lecturers on Practice-based Learning. We also produced another communications plan as part of our exciting work on promoting roles across the NHS and Social Care Services. We identified a project lead as part of our development of resources to support the education, scope of practice and pastoral guidance for international recruits. Progress for this project includes; linking in with HEE, reviewing existing guidance from HCPC and opening up conversations with NHS managers and employers.
Alongside this work we met with HEI and practice educator groups to discuss content for a feasibility report on a Common Assessment Tool for learners that undertake Practice-based Learning. We also attended a HEE workshop and a HEE preceptorship working group in order to begin our work on reviewing the implementation of the BDA Preceptorship guidance. As part of this work, we have reviewed our existing documents and met with relevant internal BDA staff and began to review our methodologies for this project.
Work began on our Return to Practice project, where we developed our Gantt chart planning and began the project lead recruitment process. Work also started on our project to ensure that we are supporting the Dietetic Support Workforce as much we possibly can. As part of this project, we have established our project lead, began our survey promotion for the project and continued to gather background information from the four nations.
We’ve found our project leads and our work on projects where we will be raising awareness of first contact practitioner roles and advanced practitioners. We also began to plan for our webinar on writing PASS Statements which is planned for July and we continued conversations on standardised language terms and continued to link with other professionals regarding this.
We also attended a HEI workshop on diversity and began discussions with other AHP education leads on the available resources that can be shared as part of our work on EDI within pre-registration and careers.
Work on neonatal education and our dietitians in mental health services projects began. We established our project leads and began Gantt chart development for both projects. Along with these projects we also began developing our Gantt chart for our advancing research project and completed preliminary activities and paper work.