Our  specialist Diabetes Team has been hailed for its work improving care for hospital patients.

We took part in the first-ever, national Insulin Safety Week  campaign which was  aimed at raising awareness of insulin safety amongst healthcare professionals.

The week ran from May 14 - 20 and  our efforts during the week resulted in our teams being highly commended/runnersup in the Insulin Safety Week Excellence Award 201.

 The award recognises initiatives  which improve the quality of life for people living with diabetes, as judged by the NHS, people with diabetes and industry.

Almost one in five (18 per cent) people with diabetes who use insulin experienced at least one insulin error whilst in hospital and this was an issue our teams set out to tackle..

Throughout the week and thereafter we visited wards and asked staff nurses to complete a questionnaire we devised.  We wanted to find out how much our nurses knew about insulin and how we could imporve that further.

The questionnaire contained a variety of questions ranging from fixed and variable-rate insulin infusions and identifying long-acting insulins. The exercise has helped us obtain a level of pre-existing knowledge shown by each staff nurse and on completion of the questionnaire further education was provided by the inpatient diabetes support nurses on a 1-1 or group basis.

Staff nurses in the winning areas achieved the highest scores as well as demonstrating a high level of enthusiasm to build upon their clinical knowledge. To this day, we are finding the posters we devised as part of the week, visible for all patients, visitors and healthcare professionals to see.

Lead Nurse for  Diabetes Ani Kumar who facilitated this campaign along with DISN Laura Emms and Serena Williamson have been recognised for their stunning and amazing efforts. The team would like to thank all the ward staff who helped us to successfully stage these campaign.