THE AWARD-WINNING Diabetes service at Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust (SWBH) has scooped another accolade becoming the joint winner of the prestigious award ‘Best initiative for prevention and early detection of diabetes and complications’ bestowed by Quality in Care (QiC) in October 2015.
Quality in Care recognises good patient care practice and different key therapy areas and enables programmes to be shared nationally. The ‘Best initiative’ award is special recognition for the innovative and practical approach that the Diabetes Services at SWBH has in treating patients.
Dr Parijat De, Diabetes Clinical Lead and main proponent of this Diabetic Renal clinic initiative, said: “We are very honoured to receive this award from Quality in Care. It is encouraging that our efforts in delivering our services is noted.
“The Diabetes service at SWBH provides a renal nurse-led review clinic to monitor patients’ conditions closely. We aim to educate this high-risk target group of diabetic patients with kidney disease about cardiovascular risk, which may emerge due to diabetes. Our nurses also ensure that patients take their medications regularly.
“Another condition that diabetic patients may experience is kidney disease. So our nurses monitor key metrics to check patients’ blood pressure, sugar and cholesterol level which would alert us to the progression of kidney disease so we can quickly devise plans to halt that progression.
“Through this clinic, we aimed to share patients own data with them and thus involve them in their own health management to influence outcomes. Over the last few years, we have been using Telehealth technology for medication reminders (and thereby improve medication compliance) and self-monitoring of blood pressure. As patients were taught how to self-monitor, they became empowered about target blood pressure readings and used free text messaging to transmit blood pressure readings to the nurse. This enabled us to remotely monitor, communicate and address specific blood pressure-related issues without patients having to leave the comfort of their homes.
“This innovative service has led to statistically significant reductions in HbA1c (a metric used to monitor blood sugar levels), high patient satisfaction scores and increased medication compliance. This is a great success for the service and we will aim to continue improving the quality of our service so our patients can be looked after better.”
ENDS