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Rapid response to:

Student Meet the Multidisciplinary Team

Tracy Earley is a consultant nurse in nutrition

BMJ 2020; 370 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m2323 (Published 07 September 2020) Cite this as: BMJ 2020;370:m2323

Rapid Response:

Re: Tracy Earley is a consultant nurse in nutrition

Dear Editor

I appreciate the effort of the authors to throw light on a “to me” new NHS professional.

1. From the article I understand this particular consultant to have taken on the “ jobs” of various other colleagues.
Do the medical schools no longer teach physiology (which inevitably includes the elements of nutrition)?

2. Gastrostomy. Feeding through used to be the function of the nurse. Special advice on what to feed was the job of the dietitian. All the dieticians I have a known and worked with have been able to teach me whatever I needed to learn. As a houseman, senior house surgeon, as a registrar, working with ward sisters of many years' experience, I had no difficulty in realising the numerous gaps in my knowledge and the hospital dietitian was always on tap.

3. A consultant nurse in nutrition.
The job title puzzles me. Why not call the person, a Specialist nurse in nutrition? (I assume there are no consultant dieticians).

4. Multidisciplinary Teams.
Could the authors please tell us whether the patients are invited to, participate - when they are able to - in the Team meetings? I ask, because as a patient, I found that not once did the TEAM invite me to let me join them - even though one member of the Team knew I wanted to participate.
This was in Pax Britannica.

Hoping for enlightenment. Some patients do like to know the whats, whys, hows, of the health services in all the domains of Her Majesty.

Competing interests: "consumer" of services

09 September 2020
JK Anand
Retired doctor
Free spirit
Pax Britannica