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Chair's Report March 2017

20th Anniversary.  This year is a landmark year for ABCD and we are celebrating our 20th anniversary.  Make sure you come along to our Spring Meeting for clinical updates, sharing best practice and research and also learning more about new developments at ABCD aimed at supporting our membership.  

Click HERE to find out more about the Spring Meeting (Make sure you are logged in to access member rates).

Insulin Pump Meeting

‘Tis not (half) so sweet now as it was before

The manufacturers of Lucozade Energy Original have produced this poster (with some assistance from ABCD) designed to inform diabetes health care professionals about the change in formulation with effect from April 2017.  For a while it is likely that both the old and new formulations will be on the shelves at the same time.   This does not specifically address the use of this product for oral glucose tolerance testing.  Our view is that it should no longer be used for this purpose as the volume required would be prohibitively large.

ABCD website announcements and news items prior to 20 March 2016

ABCD website announcements and news items prior to 20 March 2016 can be found if you click here. There was one from Richard Greenwood on 17 April 2004 but after that the announcements started on 1 December 2010 and there are many announcements and news items after that. There is also the old ABCD notice board at this address: https://www.diabetologists.org.uk/old_abcd_notice_board.htm

Pioglitazone Use and Bladder Cancer Risk

The possible link between pioglitazone exposure and the risk of bladder cancer has been contentious for a number of years. ABCD has now responded to the recent BMJ paper on the use of pioglitazone and bladder cancer risk. The emergence of recent evidence provides reassurance when pioglitazone safety is considered and ABCD calls for NICE to review this evidence to inform their advice on bladder cancer risk. For the ABCD response see: HERE
 

Assessing work-related well-being of Diabetes/Endocrine StRs

It is about TIME we assess the work place well-being for the trainee registrars in our wonderful specialty i.e. Diabetes & Endocrinology. It is something not done before in our specialty in UK but American physicians do it on a yearly basis. It is an important aspect to identify in our training and it may help improve work related experience and the stressors faced by our StR. This survey is completely anonymous and it may have a significant impact on identifying work related well-being/burnout.

Rob Gregory reads RD Lawrence

https://youtu.be/o6yiV0afaUc At the ABCD autumn meeting in Brighton, ABCD Chair, Rob Gregory gave a memorable “swan song” after dinner speech in which he read from "The diabetic life" by RD Lawrence, 12th edition reprint with "wartime supplement".  Full footage of the speech has been published on the ABCD youtube channel as well as an alternative view in which the reading from RD Lawrence is highlighted. This was Rob Gregory's last meeting as Chair of the Association

NDA report for 2015-16 published

Members working in England and Wales can now access the first report from the National Diabetes Audit for 2015-16. I encourage you to look at data for your own CCGs and trusts to see how you compare with your peers.  These data are important as they populate the CCG IAF and are used to identify those CCGs who are outliers in the worst sense.