New diabetes inpatient service at St George’s
A new service to improve care for inpatients with diabetes has launched this month at St George’s.
The new service – led by Dr Ken Earle, Consultant Diabetologist, and Orleas Mullings, Lead Nurse for Diabetes and Endocrinology – will help ensure diabetes specialist nurses have dedicated time to provide expert support and advice to patients who are admitted with this condition.
It is estimated that as many as one in four of our inpatients has diabetes at any one time. Providing effective care for their diabetes is crucial to their recovery, whatever the reason for their admission, and also helps ensure safe and efficient discharge.
Our diabetes team is based in the Thomas Addison Unit at St George’s and provides an expert service for outpatients. Over the years, the diabetes specialist nurses have tried to balance providing care for both an inpatients and outpatients diabetes service.
The expansion of the service to help support inpatients has been made possible thanks to a successful bid for a share of the £8 million national investment in diabetes from NHS England.
Dr Earle said: “We have worked hard to provide a high quality service for diabetes outpatients, but our ability to support staff caring for in-patients with diabetes is a major plus for our service. We will be able to visit some patients on the wards but, more importantly, we can work with staff to improve their knowledge of managing diabetes, and the challenges that brings.”
Investment in the service is enabling us to employ three full-time specialist inpatient diabetes nurses – and they will help deliver diabetes education, support and management for patients and staff across the Trust.
Orleas said: ‘This is really exciting for us. As a team we feel we will be in a better position to balance the expert service we provide for the inpatient diabetes service.”
