A drive to improve the care of people with diabetes admitted to Leicester’s hospitals has been launched.
Two initiatives have been set up to help doctors at the University Hospital of Leicester NHS Trust improve their understanding and knowledge about diabetes management and insulin safety in hospital.
One of these (Inpatient Diabetes Education through Animation – IDEA) involves a series of short cartoons based on real life scenarios, developed by trainee doctor, Sowmya Gururaj. The short clips are aimed at helping healthcare professionals treat patients who have diabetes and are admitted to hospital. Dr Gururaj carried out research looking at serious diabetes incidents and identifying recurring themes. The most common errors included wrong insulin prescriptions, delays in administration and incorrect doses.
The videos focus on key areas identified where mistakes have been made, with the aim of learning from these experiences, improving care and patient experience. The animations can be found on YouTube (https://goo.gl/SD56kY) and Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/album/3947654).
Diabetes consultant Kath Higgins, head of the diabetes service at Leicester Hospitals, said: “We knew there was a need to develop an innovative and memorable teaching tool which would help to share learning and address training and education gaps.
“Diabetes is complex and needs to be managed properly. If a patient is admitted to hospital with another condition, then their diabetes can sometimes get overlooked.
“Review of incidents within the trust showed that many of the errors that occurred when it came to inpatient diabetes management could have been easily avoided. We also discovered that there is a lack of confidence and knowledge among some trainee doctors when managing patients in hospital who have diabetes.
“So far, the feedback we’ve had for the animations has been hugely positive and the clips have been viewed more than 3000 times.”
The 2015 National Diabetes Inpatient Audit (NADIA) results reinforced the need to take action, showing that up to 23 per cent of inpatients in Leicester’s hospitals have diabetes, of whom up to 40 per cent are on insulin therapy.
The audit also showed that over 90 per cent of these admissions were for something other than diabetes, which meant the patients were often treated by non-diabetes speciality teams, despite still needing specific care for their diabetes. Up-skilling and educating teams across the trust was raised as a priority to the trust executive team. Shared learning from incidents was felt to provide meaningful messages which staff would relate to.
Dr Higgins added: “The next steps include wider dissemination of the IDEA cartoons across the Leicester hospitals and nationally, evaluating the effectiveness of a multi-interventional approach to improving inpatient diabetes care using the cartoons and our online portal INpatient DIabetes Education Tool for Doctors in Training (INDIE) which provides guidelines, educational videos and top tips for helping trainee doctors treat inpatients with diabetes. We also want to implement the trust-wide Safe Use of Insulin strategy which focuses on education and leadership, patient experience and clinical governance.”
The hospital’s diabetes clinical team works closely with the Leicester Diabetes Centre, an international centre of excellence in diabetes research, education and innovation led by Professor Khunti and Professor Melanie Davies. It is a partnership between the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust and the University of Leicester and is based at Leicester General Hospital. Dr Guraraj’s work was supported be funding from Health Education East Midlands and the Leicester Diabetes Centre.
Dr Kath Higgins. ABCD member
