Quality Standards for Diabetes Care Toolkit

ThinkGlucose

ThinkGlucose is designed to improve the care of people with diabetes when they are admitted to hospital. Patients with a secondary diagnosis of diabetes who receive the right care for their diabetes are able to return home fitter, more safely and with a positive patient experience (NHS 2013, p 2).
ThinkGlucose provides a structured development programme for developing and improving the care of people with diabetes who are admitted to hospital. It brings together hospital diabetes specialist teams with colleagues in patient safety, clinical governance, and commissioning, surgical and medical specialties across the hospital to deliver improved effective efficient and patient friendly care to people with diabetes. The programme aims to:

increase the awareness of diabetes in inpatients and educate staff

introduce early specialist involvement with an early discharge/follow-up plan to reduce the average length of stay

reduce prescription errors and improve patient care through publicising updated guidelines from local and national guideline producers, for example NICE.

The ThinkGlucose safe use of insulin tool provides education materials and guidance on managing self-administration, which reinforces the importance of self-administration if the patient has the appropriate skills and capabilities (p 2).
ThinkGlucose provides a comprehensive package of service improvement, leading to a clinical pathway that will help to ensure that all staff are better equipped to care for inpatients with diabetes. By improving staff knowledge, patient assessment, management of patient medication and meals, patients will have fewer complications, get better quicker and be discharged earlier (NHS 2013, p 3). Quality outcomes delivered include the significant improvements seen within the impact on quality of care or population health. For example, in York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, provision of electronic monitoring of glucose control led to efficient warning of poor glucose control allowing for responsive management of diabetes, including medication and food review, and an increased awareness of diabetes.
ThinkGlucose also improved patient safety achieved through face-to-face and e-learning training for health professionals involved in diabetes prescribing. This resulted in reduced insulin prescription errors from 24.6% (before) to 6.4% (after) in the Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Trust. The improvement on patients and carer experience are demonstrated through reduced length of stay in hospital.
Comprehensive information can be found here: www.institute.nhs.uk/quality_and_value/think_glucose/welcome_to_the_website_for_thinkglucose.html