Sally Thomas - KHPeople :: King's Health Partners

11 February 2025

What is your role?

I am the Clinical Lead Dietitian for Neurosciences at King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (NHS FT).
I lead a team of four other dietitians based at Denmark Hill, helping patients who are admitted to Neurosurgery, Neurology, Stroke, General Medicine and Healthy Aging Unit wards. Symptoms of neurological conditions can lead people to have significant difficulties with their eating and drinking. We work with a multidisciplinary team to help navigate these challenges — assessing and treating patients who require feeding via a tube, or patients who need support to get enough nutrition from their oral diet. I also provide dietetic input to outpatients receiving care from the King's Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Care and Research Centre.

I have also just started co-chairing our Trust's Adult Food and Drinks sub-group of the Nutrition Steering Committee, which oversees the delivery of nutrition and hydration to patients, staff and visitors at King's College Hospital NHS FT. My role was newly formed last year, following a restructure of our Clinical Leads team. Neuroscience services at the Hospital are well renowned, and having a dedicated dietetic lead provides an opportunity to drive positive change in nutritional care in this area.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

I came to King's College Hospital NHS FT in 2021, and the Trust has offered me endless learning and development opportunities. In our dietetic department we are fortunate to have a number of experts in their field and recruit many talented dietitians that want to work at the Trust. I enjoy the leadership aspect of my role, seeing the growth of those in my team and learning from their new perspectives.

What inspired you to get into this work?

Since being on placement as a student dietitian I have always enjoyed working in Neurosciences. I've now been working in this speciality for nearly eight years. I am fortunate to meet many remarkable patients and their relatives. Changes to the way people eat and drink as a result of a neurological condition can have a huge impact on not just physical health but psychosocial wellbeing. Food is so much more than fuel to many of us and I'm motivated to support people during difficult times in their life.

What are the benefits of working in partnership?

Research involvement for clinicians. The MND Care and Research Centre has a brilliant, dedicated research team under King's College London. This has provided me with the opportunity to get involved with clinical research, by being an interventionist to help deliver OptiCALS at King’s College Hospital NHS FT — a trial which evaluates a nutritional management intervention for people with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Partnership means our patients have more options to enrol on clinical trials which drive advancements in care and treatment for the wider population.

Collaboration and joint working. This was particularly evident to me during the roll out of our electronic health record EPIC in 2023, whereby we collaborated with colleagues at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS FT on the ongoing optimisation of documentation and patient care.