Endocrine Abstracts

Background: We have used group education sessions to instruct patients about steroid sick day rules for over 3 years. The groups were initially run by one Endocrine Nurse Specialist (ENS) so every group followed the same format with the same take home messages. With the development of a second ENS post there became an opportunity to share running the sessions. However, it was vital to ensure patients attending the groups were all given the same teaching regardless of who was running the group on a particular day. Therefore, a curriculum was developed to assist the newer ENS to run the groups effectively and to ensure good practice was maintained.

Innovation: A curriculum was developed which encompassed all aspects of preparing for, setting up and running a teaching session for patients on steroid replacement. The ethos of encouraging patients to share their stories, and problem solve scenarios was outlined in the document.

Conclusion: Having a written curriculum has helped the ENSs to maintain consistency during their steroid group education sessions. It was also a point of reference to assist the newer ENS when she first started to run groups independently. More recently an ENS from another centre has visited us to observe a session and we were able to provide her with the curriculum document to take back and use in her hospital.