This award recognises that improved self-care is both empowering to patients, and reduces the incidence and costs of diabetic complications.
Winner
The Year of Care programme – implementing care planning and support for self-care as routine diabetes care
Year of Care Partnerships
The overall aim of the Year of Care programme was to systematically test if care planning could be implemented as ‘normal care’ across different and diverse health communities. The approach aimed to ensure that people with diabetes had active involvement in deciding, agreeing and owning how their condition is managed, including an agreed plan for self-management. Three pilot sites of differing histories in standards of care were chosen, with each undertaking a complex range of activities to improve self-care. Core to this was training and support for practice teams, as well as using a healthcare assistant to gather and send information to patients ahead of consultations. At the end of the pilot, 76 per cent of people on practice registers with type 2 diabetes had at least one care planning consultation.
Highly commended
Delivering Results to You: a novel information-sharing process in diabetes care
Sandwell Hospital
‘Delivering Results to You’ is an initiative that aims to help people understand diabetes and take control of their condition by automatically letting patients know their HbA1c results within 5 days of having their blood test through personal mailers. This allows people the time and insight needed to reflect on their treatment plan before a consultation, and enables patients to become active partners in diabetes care planning. They can also better understand new units for HbA1c reporting and agree individualised targets for HbA1c. The initiative has shown it can make it easier for people to talk to their doctor or nurse, and it has promoted positive changes in eating, activity and taking the right medicines. The process was created with input from people with diabetes, which has helped give it a high acceptance rate and made it easy to understand, even for those with health literacy difficulties. The process is simple, automated and relatively cheap, at less than 50p per item.
Finalist
The Patient Self-Management of Diabetes Initiative
Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust
Following on from the success of the Think Glucose Project in 2010, this initiative was aimed at enabling patients to self-manage their diabetes and safely administer insulin in hospital. A Trust wide adult inpatient process was implemented, involving a self-management education programme that was delivered by diabetes Link nurses, diabetes specialist nurses and the Trust practice educators. In addition, all staff were encouraged to complete the NHS Diabetes online ‘Safe use of insulin’ e-learning course and weekly audits were undertaken by the diabetes Link nurses to ensure that patients on insulin were assessed for their suitability to self administer insulin. A CQUIN target was successfully met and there was a reduction in length of stay by 2.6 days. Results from the National Diabetes Inpatient Audit 2011 demonstrated that 77.8 per cent of patients with diabetes could take control of their diabetes, an improvement on the previous year and above national average. Patient satisfaction with their diabetes care also rose to 87.5 per cent in 2011.
Leicester Foundation Group: Structured education for people with new onset type 1 diabetes
UHL NHS Trust (Leicester General Hospital)
The Foundation Group was developed to empower people with type 1 diabetes through the acquisition of acquire skills, knowledge and peer support from diagnosis. Adopting the principles of empowerment and derived responsibilities of health care professionals described in Diabetes Education and Self Management for Ongoing and Newly Diagnosed (DESMOND), the Group provided a course for six to eight people delivered over seven to eight hours that included case studies, food models, insulin devices, a quiz, and participants’ individual home blood glucose results if they were willing to share them. Participants reported improved confidence and awareness in aspects of diabetes, such as hypoglycaemia and insulin adjustment.
