Graduate Nutrition Scope of Practice
May Include:
- Use of scientific and traditional evidence in development of nutritional and lifestyle treatment plan
- Clients are assessed on their individual dietary needs
- Prescription of use of foods as medicines
- Dietary analysis and nutritional plan (may include therapeutic diet and/or diet modification)
- Prescription, administration, dispensing and use of nutritional supplements or functional foods
- Lifestyle counselling
- Health assessment and the application of medical science, including pathophysiology
from both orthodox and complementary and alternative medicine viewpoints and research findings - Recognition of red flags for referral
Graduate Nutritionists are not permitted to treat:
- Notifiable disease (as defined by the New Zealand Ministry of Health).
- Malignancies or neoplasms (of any type), except when the patient/client is under conventional medical care and the treatment is confined to lifestyle and dietary support
- Psychiatric conditions where psychosis is the diagnosed disorder
Graduate nutritionists are not permitted to:
- Prescribe, administer, dispense or recommend any herbal products or nutritional supplementation that contains medicinal herb ingredients. Any herbal products are outside the scope of practice of a nutritionist as it is not included in the nutritional training. If herbal medicine is require an appointment or referral to a Wellpark naturopathic student or graduate is required. The only exception to this is herbs and spices in food (e.g. culinary herbs) which can be recommended to your clients in recipes.
- Students are not permitted to recommend any herbal product (packaged tea or otherwise) for a therapeutic purpose to their clients whilst enrolled in NU201 as herbal medicine is outside their scope of practice.