Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: In 2014 the diabetes multidisciplinary team at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital Foundation Trust introduced dedicated annual review clinics for children with type I diabetes over the age of 8 years. Children receive their Consultant appointment, foot check, annual review bloods and structured education sessions in a single afternoon clinic visit. We present the results of two annual service evaluation projects, which have helped us improve the clinics and allowed us to target the educational needs of our patients.

Methods: A Structured feedback questionnaire was designed with strength of agreement questions assessing the quality and timing of education sessions and questions about the physical checks and usefulness of a dedicated annual review clinic. The feedback questionnaire was modified for the 2015 evaluation to capture more information about the educational needs of our patients. Questionnaires were given to all patients attending clinic to complete in the waiting room with a box placed by the outpatient reception to collate responses.

Results: In total of 54 questionnaires were received from 147 patients attending annual review clinics in 2014. 54 responses were received from 176 patients attending in 2015. 91% of patients responded positively to the question “Is an annual review clinic useful”. Similarly education sessions were highly rated in terms of relevance, usefulness and ability to answer questions. 85% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they would use what they had learnt to improve their health.

The 2015 evaluation demonstrated that parents and children had different educational priorities. Our young people were more interested to learn about diabetes and adolescent health issues such as driving, alcohol, pregnancy and sexual health whilst parents valued more practical topics such as insulin adjustment for hyperglycaemia and exercise (Figure 1).

Conclusions: Dedicated Annual review clinics are highly rated by our patients and feedback comments largely positive. The results have enabled us to tailor structured education sessions to the needs of our patients and parents. We have seen a reduction in non-attendance rates from 17 patients in 2014 (11.5%) to 11 patients in 2015 (6%) supporting the fact that our service users value the clinics despite the longer duration of appointment.