Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Our adolescent transition diabetes clinic (16–24 years) is run by a multi-disciplinary team (adult and paediatric diabetes consultant, diabetes specialist nurses and a dietician) every 4 months.

Aim: Questionnaire survey of patients understanding of their diabetes and satisfaction about the running and set-up of this unique transition clinic.

Method: A two-page questionnaire given to patients attending clinic or posted out.

Results: In total, 34 out of 56 questionnaires were returned. About 70% were aware of their most recent HbA1c. About 77% felt that their diabetes knowledge was good to excellent. About 23 and 21% patients experienced between 1–2 and 2–5 minor hypoglycaemia per week respectively. About 42% had attended the DAFNE course.

With regards to clinic environment, 88% rated clinic staff to be friendly and helpful, 84% thought that privacy level was good to excellent and 86% felt that enough time was devoted to appointments with minimal waiting times.

Timely notification of appointment letter was appreciated by 93%. About 73% felt adequate information was provided in the clinical correspondence. About 86% of patients were very satisfied with the accessibility and on-going support from diabetes specialist nurse (drop-in clinics, e-mail and mobile contact).

About 91% felt that the quality of care received in this clinic was good to excellent. About 94% wanted this transition clinic in the hospital setting rather than in the community. About 89 and 97% felt very satisfied with the consultations received from the doctors and nurses respectively. About 97% believed that this transition clinic helped them deal more effectively with their diabetes.

Conclusion: Although majority of our adolescents were satisfied with clinic environment and overall care received in the transition clinic, we need to focus more on specific aspects to further improve patient empowerment, mainly, patients own knowledge of their HbA1c, uptake of DAFNE and written clinical information given to our patients. We plan to re-audit this in future.

Declaration of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research project.

Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sector.