A Focus on the Introduction of Educator Meetings in Nottinghamshire

Recently, the DESMOND Team at the Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust started hosting Educator meetings for DESMOND Educators from across their patch. Read on to hear from Rebecca Januszczyk, Community Diabetes Dietitian, as to why this was introduced, what they did on the day and their plans for the future:

Why did you feel this was needed?

“As a DESMOND team we are always thinking of ways to improve the service, helping to ensure all participants have the best experience possible. We also need to make sure we are continuing to deliver sessions with the DESMOND learning theories and philosophies in mind, using the DESMOND behaviours, whilst ensuring we are up to date with any new evidence. There have also been recent changes in the way we deliver certain activities now social distancing measures have been relaxed.

“We have a number of educators within the DESMOND team, some delivering every week, and others delivering just a few times a year, often with many other clinical commitments, so we don’t always see each other on a regular basis. The idea came about after I attended a DESMOND virtual study day in March.”

What did you do?

“At the meeting we discussed what behaviours we feel we are doing well and why these behaviours are so important. We also discussed what we find most challenging or what we feel we need to improve in terms of behaviours, and ideas around how to do this.

“Examples include ways of directing questions back to the group, how to move the session on if one participant is contributing more than others and how to further explore participant’s beliefs and feelings.

“We also discussed content updates, including considerations for returning activities to being more interactive & participant led (as per our local infection control guidance), and had a discussion around sweeteners and around cooking oils.

“Minutes were emailed to the whole team as a record of discussions, and for anyone who couldn’t attend.”

What is your plan going forward for these meetings?

“Educators found it helpful to spend time discussing what we are doing well and ideas for improvement, and we have already started implementing some of these ideas.

“We have regular DESMOND CPD sessions too, but plan to have this new style of Educator meeting every 6 months.”