New tool to boost referrals to diabetes education programmes

By Editor
21st May 2019
Charity, Education South East Type 1 diabetes Type 2 diabetes

A new tool designed to help healthcare professionals boost referrals to structured education courses for people with diabetes has been unveiled.

The new Improving your diabetes knowledge Information Prescription has been developed by Diabetes UK and Kent and Medway STP. It is now available nationally from today, Tuesday, May 21, on the Diabetes UK website or via EMIS or Vision and is part of a series of Information Prescriptions for healthcare professionals.

Diabetes UK was commissioned by Kent and Medway STP to produce the ‘Improving your diabetes knowledge’ Information Prescription as part of the Diabetes Transformation Fund initiative – a £44 million programme by NHS England in 2017 to improve care and to reduce the number of people experiencing complications.

The charity is encouraging healthcare professionals to use the Information Prescription to have a useful conversation with their patients about structured education courses, boost referrals to local diabetes courses for everyone living with the condition, and to help make these a key part of the care and treatment people with diabetes receive.

The new Information Prescription is the latest template to be added to Diabetes UK’s suite of Information Prescriptions. Each of these is designed to simplify an area of diabetes management and help healthcare professionals and their patients with diabetes work together to achieve straightforward healthcare goals.

Bridget Turner, Director of Policy Campaigns and Improvement at Diabetes UK, said: “More than 500 people with diabetes die prematurely every week because of complications. But the heart-breaking reality is that, in the majority of cases, these could have been prevented or delayed with the right support.

We want this new Information Prescription to be a useful reminder for healthcare professionals to have a conversation with their patients with diabetes, as part of their care planning process. Bridget Turner, Diabetes UK

“Diabetes is a serious condition and gaining control of it can be hard. We want this new Information Prescription to be a useful reminder for healthcare professionals to have a conversation with their patients with diabetes, as part of their care planning process, to encourage them of the benefits of attending diabetes education courses.”

Michelle Whitham is the Diabetes Commissioning Project Manager for Kent and Medway Sustainability and Transformation Plan. She said: “We know that education is vital to people living with diabetes and have been working hard over the past two years to increase the numbers of attendees across Kent and Medway. As well as improving attendance in our own area, we wanted to contribute to the wider ambition of doubling the numbers of current attendees across England, and to offer CCGs the tools they need to drive these numbers up in an effort to reduce the number of complications. Information Prescriptions are not only an important tool for GP practices, but also offer invaluable information to people living with diabetes.”

Comments (0)

Register an account or login to comment