Clinical Dietitian 2 Outpatient

Where You’ll Work

Founded in 1941, Dignity Health - Dominican Hospital is a 188-bed, acute care, nonprofit hospital located in Santa Cruz, California. Serving over 80,000 patients annually, the hospital offers a full complement of services including heart care, orthopedics, and a Family Birthing Center. Additionally, Dominican Hospital has been recognized as an LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality High Performer by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. It is a Joint Commission-certified Primary Stroke Center, and has been awarded the AMA/ASA’s Get the Guidelines - Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement, recognizing the hospital’s commitment to providing the best stroke care.

One Community. One Mission. One California 

Job Summary and Responsibilities

As a Clinical Dietitian, you will provide expert nutrition care, developing and implementing individualized plans to improve patient health outcomes.

Every day you will clearly communicate nutritional data across all systems and participate in health team meetings as the resident nutrition expert.

To be successful in this role, you will integrate robust clinical expertise with empathetic, evidence-based care, consistently adhering to professional standards and fostering effective communication with patients and healthcare teams.

• Conducts patient screening in accordance with specialized clinical guidelines for those at a specific nutritional risk.
• Performs nutritional assessment using age and gender appropriate standards, cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds; and utilizing validated assessment tools resulting in nutrition related diagnosis when indicated.
• Conducts routine screening to identify patients at nutritional risk.
• Collaborates within an interdisciplinary environment to contribute to facilitating care and identifying patients at nutrition risk or needing higher levels of care.
• Implements targeted and specific nutrition intervention(s) based on the specific medical condition.
• Provides customized nutrition education to patients and/or families and caregivers.

Our outpatient MNT program provides individualized nutrition assessment, counseling, and ongoing management for patients with various medical conditions. The dietitian also supports our bariatric surgery service line, cardiac rehabilitation program, physician-referred outpatient services, nutrition education, and support groups.

Job Requirements

Required

• Bachelors Other completion of accredited dietetics program (ACEND - Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition Dietetics) and Three (3) years acute care hospital or similar experience working with patients in more complex levels of care to specialized populations, upon hire
• Registered Dietitian ADA, upon hire or
• Registered Dietitian AND, upon hire or
• Registered Dietitian CDR, upon hire and
• Registered Dietician, upon hire 

Preferred

• Experience with Medical Nutrition Therapy for a variety of medical conditions, including:
• Bariatric Surgical patients
• Prediabetes and IFG
• Hyperlipidemia and cardiovascular disease
• Hypertension
• Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD)
• PMOS (Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome)
• Renal disease
• Eating disorders
• Overweight and obesity including guidance with taking GLP-1 medications
• Gastrointestinal disorders, including irritable bowel syndrome, dyspepsia, GERD and food intolerances
• Other nutrition-related medical conditions requiring therapeutic dietary intervention
• Experience with teaching group nutrition class