Meet Natalie

Natalie’s internship focus and aims

I plan to undergo a service evaluation of our paediatric familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) input within our Inherited Metabolic Disease service. The FH caseload has significantly increased over the last ten years, due to advances in cascade testing. Despite the surge in numbers, our staffing levels and scheduled clinics have not increased in line with patient numbers. The NICE guidelines advise all people with FH should be offered individualised nutritional advice; however, we currently do not have clinical capacity to offer the recommended dietetic treatment. The main themes and challenges my internship will focus on is the provision of dietetic treatment in an ever-growing caseload. I am interested to find out how other metabolic centres manage the increased demand for dietetic input into paediatric FH. I am particularly looking forward to undergoing quantitative research training and developing my own survey. I am also looking forward to getting to know the other researchers in this cohort so we can learn from each other.