Linking with patients' annual review
All patients diagnosed with diabetes will be offered the opportunity to attend their GP surgery for an annual review; this is a great opportunity to link the importance of attending structured education, as well as continuing to promote self-management.
For those that have already attended a DESMOND group or taken part in the MyDESMOND programme at their annual review:
HCPs should refer the patient to the action plan/s or any goals set as part of this
Patients could ask for their latest biomedical results and plot these with their previous dataset to look at any changes and what these would mean
Additional/ongoing educational support could be offered – i.e. if an online intervention is available, ensure this is promoted
It may be beneficial to provide a poster to be put up in GP rooms to act as a reminder focus-point for discussion; this could include a picture of a blank action plan and any documentation that was used in the programme to track biomedical results - click here for a sample
For those that have not yet attended a DESMOND group or taken part in the MyDESMOND programme at their annual review:
HCPs should provide a brief overview of what structured education is and how to ‘sign up’
A short leaflet underpinning the above discussion should be handed out
Next steps should be outlined