The Diabetes and Endocrinology team at St Helens Hospital has received the highest level of accreditation for their patient education programmes.
People with diabetes need to make important decisions about the management of their condition on a day-to-day basis and to help them do that the team at St Helens has put together a structured education package with interactive workshops to support patients to look after their condition.
The Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust team currently runs seven programmes covering topics such as insulin management and carbohydrate education which have gained national accreditation from the Quality Institute for Self-Management Education and Training (QISMET) – ensuring they have received the national ‘gold standard’ for self-management education programmes.
The final QISMET report was full of praise for the team stating: “The commitment and understanding shown by staff interviewed to the concepts of self-management was high. There is a clear commitment by the organisation and staff individually to continually improve the programmes.’’
Gemma Lewis, a Diabetes Clinical Research Fellow for the Specialist Diabetes Team said: “It is so important that diabetes patients are able to manage their condition, and the team has worked extremely hard to develop self-learning packages that help them to do this.
“We are delighted to receive the QISMET accreditation which recognises that the education we provide is safe, effective and meets the high-quality standards our patients deserve.’’
Carol is a diabetes patient from St Helens who attended one of the team’s day-long general education sessions this week and said she was “amazed’’ by what she learned, despite having the condition for more than 30 years.
She said: “I have always looked after my diabetes pretty well over the years but there is always something new to learn as your condition can change. I only started taking insulin
recently and the session was fantastic in teaching me the fundamentals of insulin care. It was really educational, but it was also taught in an easy to understand manner and I feel so much more aware of what I have to do and how to manage my condition.
“I was with nine other people on the session, many of them only recently diagnosed, and we all said how amazing it had been and how we had all learned something really valuable from it.’’