About the clinic
Diabetes prevention and management is carried out by the Hightown multidisciplinary diabetes team. This is made up of a GP and pharmacist both with a special interest in diabetes. Trained nurses with additional training and qualifications in diabetes. All are diabetes educators.
A diabetic educator provides patients with education and knowledge to develop skills for self management, helping patients to learn the best ways to take care of themselves and manage the day to day challenges of living with diabetes.
Your diabetes educator will ask for information to identify areas where you need the most help as well as your priorities that will help you reach not only your glycaemia (blood glucose) controls but your overall health goals too.
The diabetes clinic serves two main purposes.
The first, and most important, is in providing support to allow patients with diabetes to manage their condition.
The second is to assess for complications of diabetes and ensure appropriate treatment is in place to prevent further complications or, when present, to prevent them from getting worse and hence improve your quality of life.
To enable this discussion and monitoring the clinic will include:
- Healthy eating
- Being active
- Monitoring BP, weight, blood and urine test, feet inspection and care. Injection technique and sites
- Taking medication and altering medication if appropriate
- Reducing risks of the complications of diabetes
Please note that the COVID pandemic has changed the way in which we provide diabetes care within the clinic.
Why attend?
In the short term controlled glucose levels can reduce extreme thirst, frequent urination (including waking through the night to use the toilet) tiredness and weight loss.
In the longer term (years) poorly controlled blood glucose levels can increase the chance of developing complications related to diabetes. Exposure to high blood glucose levels over a long period of time can result in damage to the eyes, kidneys and nerves. Patients with diabetes are also at greater risk of cardiovascular disease. However, with appropriate diabetes care, the chances of developing diabetes complications can be dramatically reduced and, in some cases, where tackled early enough put your diabetes into remission allowing you to reduce medication.
Resources
If you have Type 2 Diabetes you may find the following videos of some help to compliment your understanding and allow you to manage your Diabetes as best as possible for the future.
This link is for anyone for speaks Punjabi, Hindi, Polish or Somali
Type 2 Diabetes Videos – Community Languages
Living with Diabetes can be hard. Do you want to feel confident in managing your Type 2 diabetes, improve your mental wellbeing and make and maintain healthy lifestyle choices? If the answer is yes then please check out/refer yourself to the FREE healthy living web based course on the following link;
www.diabetes.org.uk/diabetes-info
Planning a pregnancy and have type 2 diabetes?
Visit Pregnancy and diabetes – Stay Well to learn how to have a safe, healthy pregnancy.