Dietitian at The State Hospitals Board for Scotland

The job at The State Hospitals Board for Scotland

Dietitians assess, diagnose and treat diet and nutrition problems, translating nutritional science into practical advice and clinical treatment. On a hospital ward that can mean calculating and recommending tube or intravenous feeding, managing refeeding risk and reviewing biochemistry; in the community it can mean supporting people with diabetes, coeliac disease, food allergy, kidney disease, cancer or eating disorders. Dietitians also run group education, train other staff, work in public health and research, and advise industry and government. People of all ages with medical conditions affected by diet — including digestive, kidney, metabolic and swallowing disorders, malnutrition, food allergy, obesity and eating disorders — as well as healthy populations.

At a health board such as The State Hospitals Board for Scotland, that work means a caseload that can span the whole pathway — acute wards, outpatient clinics and community teams — without changing employer, because the board is responsible for all NHS care in its area. Boards often run broad rotations across acute and community services, and specialising later rarely means leaving the organisation. Across the profession as a whole, dietitians work in settings including NHS acute trust, intensive care and ward-based services, community and GP practice, renal and oncology services and eating disorder services — an organisation of this type will run some of those services and not others, which is why two posts with the same job title in the same city can be very different jobs.

Pay is not an employer decision. Agenda for Change is negotiated nationally and set separately in each of the four nations, so The State Hospitals Board for Scotland pays band 5 exactly what every other NHS employer in Scotland pays it: £34,544 at the bottom of the band on the 2026/27 scale. For context, median full-time pay across all occupations in Scotland was £39,719 in 2025. What genuinely differs between two employers is the caseload, how rotations are structured, how much protected time you get for supervision and continuing professional development, how much band 6 progression is built into the establishment, and how far you travel between sites. Those are the questions worth asking at interview.

This page states no figure specific to The State Hospitals Board for Scotland because none is published in the open data. When the workforce and staff survey feeds include this organisation, the establishment size, the response rate and the theme scores will appear above.