The hospital-based East and North Herts Diabetes service is a nationally renowned and award-winning service. It is provided by a multi-disciplinary team that is made up of consultants, specialist nurses, dietitians, podiatrists, and diabetes educators. The team also runs a telehealth service for young adults and for patients with diabetic kidney disease.
Patients are also supported by the Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust diabetes service. The service provides specialist diabetes care and support in GP practices, community clinics and in people’s homes (for housebound patients) and in care homes. Services include virtual clinics, dietary support, and diabetes education.
Self-management courses for patients living in east and north Hertfordshire
- EMPOWER T2n is a free education programme for people living with type 2 diabetes. In the video below, Tony who has Type 2 diabetes and has attended the EMPOWER T2n course shares how it has helped him and what he thinks of the programme:
Anybody referred to EMPOWER I would say definitely do it go for it. You’ll learn a lot and you’ll come out feeling a better person [Music]. Siagnosed with diabetes about 10 and a half to 11 months ago -that’s when it all started. I hadn’t heard of it before but when I heard it and heard that people had been going and coming back with good results, I couldn’t wait to get here. It benefited me by knowing exactly what I could eat and what I couldn’t eat. A lot of other people are in the same situation and I just wanted to be with them learn a bit more. I would definitely recommend EMPOWER – it’s helped me. I’ve understood most of what was going on was able to ask questions got very good answers. Coming here has done me the world of good and I know I can still eat what I want to and I can eat other things that I need to [Music].
- DAFNE (Dose adjustment for normal eating) is a five-day educational course for managing type 1 Diabetes. You can learn more about DAFNE and what patients thought of the course in this video:
If people were considering or contemplating, I’d say don’t doubt yourself just do it because it’s so worth it [Music]. The Daphne course is predominantly for people with type 1 diabetes although we have got people with type 2 diabetes who are sensitive to insulin also attending the course and the patients with type 1 diabetes are all on a multiple daily injections so they’re typically injecting four if not five injections of insulin per day. The main benefit of coming on a diabetes Daphne course is the ability to meet up with other people with diabetes which often people don’t have in their day-to-day life experiences. It’s a structured education program so the information that you get if you attend a course in the Hebrides would be exactly the same information as you’ll get if you attend a course in Hertfordshire. It’s quality assured research based and the information that you’re getting is up to date. What I got out of the course was seven new friends but more so than that was a far better understanding of diabetes itself. I’ve been a diabetic for a very long time and I think I thought I knew everything about it already and it was a very pleasant surprise and an eye opener that actually my knowledge was nothing like what I thought it was, and it’s really it’s really positive and it will improve your health and you’ll find out a lot more about what’s going on about yourself. We’ve yet to deliver a course where somebody will not learn something new. It’s very much about teaching people to self-manage a condition that they have for a lifetime. We’re not there to dictate, we’re there to bring along on the journey the ability of counting carbohydrates and the foods that they eat and adjusting their insulin accordance. It’s not strict, we’re not there to critique and we’re there to support any decision making they make along the way. Don’t be anxious because there is absolutely nothing to be anxious about. I have delayed coming on this course for 20 years and it is probably the biggest mistake so far of my life so I’m gonna take a lot of knowledge away with me but it was also great to live and hear of other people’s experiences from living with diabetes. So in Hertfordshire we deliver the course in three different formats: you can come for a week long you can come one day a week for five weeks or you can even do it at home remotely. I think it’s probably the best bit about my job is leading a definite course. It’s the enjoyment of seeing people grow and develop during the week for people to learn new ideas and to apply those in their day-to-day lives and you just see people blossom on the course and really understand more about their diabetes and therefore be able to live a more normal life. Thank you to the instructors they kind of made it you know. Yes you’ve got the the people around you that you’re learning with [Music] but without their advice and their input yeah they’re incredible [Music].