Waseema Senior Dietitian “Within my role as an upper Gastro-Intestinal (GI) dietitian, I see a vast number of patients with nutritional problems related to their underlying disease. It's a rewarding job helping patients improve their quality of life.”

Waseema splits her job between two hospitals in the West Midlands. She's a senior dietitian in a large NHS hospital and she works in a private hospital, too.

When you're in the NHS hospital how do you spend an average day?

When I first qualified I worked in general gastro medicine, but now I specialise in working with upper GI surgery patients.

Upper GI, what's that?

Upper gastro-intestinal; it could be anything from the throat to the pancreas, but mostly it's stomach or oesophagus. My patients come in for cancer surgery and I will see them before and after surgery.

A general day might include meetings with the surgeons discussing cases – new cases and following up progress on others. Sometimes there are full GI team meetings, this will include doctors, surgeons, dietitians and Macmillan nurses. Every day I'll spend some time on the wards. And when I'm back in the office there are always a host of phone calls concerning patients I'm still supporting.

How do you support patients?

I see them before surgery. Sometimes they may have difficulty swallowing and they may be underweight as well. So I might need to recommend a high calorie, high protein diet, either as a liquid or as a soft diet. After surgery, patients are fed, first of all, via a feeding tube into their bowel with a liquid food; I need to assess this and review it regularly. I see patients while they are on tube feeding and review it regularly, whilst they progress back to a normal diet.

Do you do the same at the private hospital?

No. I see a full range of patients here. They might include lower GI surgery, diabetes, renal and gastro medicine patients. Gastro medicine might include patients with irritable bowel syndrome or coeliac patients – these are people who must eat gluten-free diets.

That's a big workload.

There's more. At the NHS hospital, we're involved in student training. I help develop students' training programmes and assess them. I also write and update material on the CancerBACUP website, www.cancerhelp.org I do this with a colleague – but in my own time from home.

You must see some very ill people – is it tough, emotionally?

Some people I see have inoperable cancers, but we can still help them. It's rewarding seeing that you can make the quality of people's lives better, even if they only have a short while to live.

People go home, or some inoperable patients might go to a hospice, but they still have me as a contact. So I give them on-going support; and they talk to me about all sorts of things, not just about food.

We're taught how to cope, but it's hard sometimes. So we speak to each other and there is support for us. It's important.

How did you get into your job?

I don't think I did it in the usual way! I wanted to be a beautician but my parents said it wasn't a proper job – that it was a sideline. They wanted me to move into pharmacy. I'd always been interested in food and nutrition and then I met some dietitians at a school open day. I particularly liked the idea that dietitians didn't spend all day sitting behind desks.

What are your career prospects?

Thinking about that can be a bit frustrating sometimes. The next step would be to move into management but I'm not sure I want that. Some dietitians think about moving into industry, but I would prefer to stay medically based. Some work in gyms or move into teaching or lecturing.

What are the best bits?

Helping people – it's marvellous being able to see them eating and drinking again. There's a good learning curve in the job too; I never get bored.