Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The Best Practice Tariff states that units must provide a structured education programme which should be ‘tailored to the child’s needs, both at the time of initial diagnosis and ongoing updates’. Traditionally, there has been poor uptake of our education sessions with attendance rates of 20% (range 0–30). Therefore, an integrated education clinic was introduced which combined education within a multidisciplinary (MDT) clinic session for ongoing patient and carer teaching. Parents and children were educated separately (by doctors and nurse-dietitian teams respectively) and children were further divided into age groups to allow tailored advice giving. Family members other than primary care givers involved in the care of the child, friends and siblings were also invited. The aims of this audit were to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of the integrated education clinic by examining the uptake of the clinic together with the feedback from each session.

Methods: Attendance rates were calculated by looking at those who attended out of the total number of invitees. At each clinic, both patients and their family members received a feedback form which assessed: knowledge on the chosen topic (sick day rules), confidence in using the knowledge, awareness of local Out of Hours policy and overall experience of the education clinic, both before and after the session.

Results: In total of 63 feedback forms were assessed over 4 such clinics, (response rate >95%) Attendance rates were 80.7%. Overall, 97% of parents said that would recommend the session to others, with 85% saying that they preferred to have the education sessions separate from their children. The education clinics increased understanding of sick day rules – 92% of parents indicated that they fully understood the topic after the session compared to 43% beforehand. Parents indicated that they were more informed regarding out of hours contact numbers as a result of the session – for example, knowledge of the pager number increased from 34% – 47% with a similar increase regarding its operating hours (27%–40%).

Conclusion: The integrated education clinic improved attendance, allowed for tailored advice giving and increased both knowledge and confidence in the ongoing management of diabetes.