Using the National Diabetes Inpatient Audit to evaluate the delivery of diabetes education

摘要

Evaluation of diabetes education is difficult. This is particularly so when a beneficial clinicaloutcome may be seen as just a result of good clinical care. The added value of an approach tocare using diabetes education concepts is then difficult to see. We believe our diabetesspecialist care inpatient team does not only provide focused regular care to patients; the teamalso intends to educate patients, non-specialist health care professionals, and ourselves. We have used audit standards derived from the questions and answers of the NationalDiabetes Inpatient Audits (NDIAs) for 2009-2011 to evaluate our performance as diabeteseducators in the inpatient setting of a small district general hospital in Wessex. The results arefavourable. Likewise, we have compared the performance in the 2010 NDIA of five acutetrusts, including our own in Wessex, relating diabetes nurse specialist time available, and thepresence of a dedicated team, to quality outcomes. Finally, we discuss some broad concepts of delivering diabetes education to inpatients andnon-specialist health care professionals, trained or in training; we also suggest some possiblemodifications to the NDIA to strengthen its use as an evaluation tool for diabetes education inthe inpatient setting in secondary care.