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Diabetes is a serious condition where your blood glucose level is too high. It can happen when your body doesn’t produce enough insulin or the insulin it produces isn’t effective. Or, when your body can’t produce any insulin at all.
Normally, a person’s pancreas (an organ in the body which plays a role in digestion) produces a natural hormone called insulin, which controls the levels of glucose in the blood. Diabetes occurs when the body does not produce enough insulin or produces insulin but cannot use it properly.
Services
The service aims to give outstanding care to patients with diabetes. The team will talk to the patient about diabetes treatment plans and offer them advice and guidance.
Care will be provided by working closely with podiatrists dietitians and clinical nurse specialists.
Clinics provided by the team include:
- Renal and Kidney disease related to diabetes clinics
- Transition clinic from the paediatric and young adult services
- Foot clinic
- Lipid clinic
- Antenatal clinic within with Maternity
- Insulin pump clinic
Diabetes Outpatients clinics
The Diabetes and endocrinology team provide a wide range of specialist nurse-led services including clinics for weight management, carbohydrate counting and reviews for young adults.
Diabetes inpatient Team – Think Glucose
The Trust’s diabetes team aims to empower patients and carers to self-manage diabetes and seek advice and help early to improve quality of life, reduce complications and prevent hospital admissions.
The Think Glucose team service runs from Monday to Friday 8am to 4pm. This is a nurse-led service supported by a doctor.
Dose Adjustment For Normal Eating (DAFNE)
DAFNE is a standardised, structured way of delivering diabetes education to people with type 1 diabetes. It focuses on self-management principles and matching insulin to food choices. It is delivered to small groups by a diabetes clinical nurse specialist, a specialist dietitian and a consultant over five days. Referral is via the Diabetes Team. More information is available on the DAFNE Web site by going to: https://dafne.nhs.uk/
X-Pert
X-PERT is one of several diabetes education courses in the UK. X-PERT Diabetes Programme runs in three different formats to cater for people with different types of diabetes as well as those at risk of diabetes. For more information go to https://www.xperthealth.org.uk/
Patient Information
Types of diabetes
Diabetes is a complicated condition which prevents in many different forms. The most common types of diabetes are Type 1, Type 2 and gestational diabetes, however there are a range of other types of diabetes, which are just as important
Type 1 – Type 1 diabetes (also called insulin-dependent diabetes) occurs when there is a severe lack of insulin in the body because most, or all, of the cells in the pancreas that produce it have been destroyed. This type of diabetes usually appears in people under the age of 40, often in childhood, and is treated by insulin injections and diet.
Type 2 – Type 2 diabetes (also called non-insulin-dependent diabetes) develops when the body can still make some insulin, but not enough for its needs, or when the insulin that is produced does not work properly (known as insulin resistance).
Gestational Diabetes – This type of diabetes usually appears in people over the age of 40, though it can appear in younger people.
Common Symptoms of diabetes
Symptoms can depend on the type of diabetes you have. But the common symptoms of diabetes include:
- Going to the toilet a lot, especially at night
- Being really thirsty
- Feeling more tired than usual
- Losing weight without trying to
- Genital itching or thrush
- Cuts and wounds take longer to heal
- Blurred vision
Should you experience any of the above, we recommend you contact you General Practitioner for further advice and support.
Contact
To contact the service call switchboard on 0121 507 1831 and ask for the diabetes team.
For more information about disabled access for this service