Inpatient Diabetes Service (Outreach)

The Inpatient Diabetes Team consists of 5 nurses and a lead Consultant who provide a 7 day service with consultant cover, this is on a rotational basis with days off in the week if covering the weekend.

The Inpatient diabetes service manage and optimise diabetes control in an inpatient setting. We offer support and knowledge to patients, to empower the optimisation of their management of diabetes.

• We assess and make recommendations to support these patients and their medical team to manage blood glucose levels in hospital.
• Patients with previously undiagnosed diabetes or those without diabetes but high glucose levels resulting from their condition/treatment are also seen by the team.
• We provide patients education in diabetes self-management when needed, assess if patients need additional support, to ensure safety or provide continuity, following discharge.
• We also provide a post discharge telephone call to patients from the hospital. This enables us to further support the patient on discharge and if necessary, refer them onto either the Integrated Community Diabetes Service, GP or for further diabetes support in our outpatient department.
• We will contact the community diabetes specialist team or GP practice to hand over information regarding changes made during admission or to alert to any on-going review needs.
• Staff education programs and guidelines have been developed to enable safe and standardised practices for inpatient diabetes management.
• We regularly participate in national audits and as well as monitor and quality improve our services via internal audit and quality improvement projects.

The Inpatient Diabetes Team use up to date evidence based information and high quality care to deliver a seamless service. This is achieved through the development of enhanced multi-disciplinary team process and communication within the wider team.