Barriers to uptake of diabetes education
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Investigation into the barriers to uptake of structured education in people with Type 1 diabetes mellitus within South London.
IRAS ID
161100
Contact name
Stephanie Amiel
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 18 days
Research summary
Type 1 diabetes is a chronic condition presenting from childhood to early adulthood. The resultant high blood sugars, due to lack of insulin, cause multiple complications years later. Normalising blood sugars reduces the risk and severity of complications. Insulin, taken by injection, is used to treat diabetes and the amount of insulin required by each person at different times of day has many variables, including the carbohydrate content of meals and the amount of activity undertaken. In the 20th century patients were prescribed a set amount of insulin and then had to eat accordingly with little adjustment in daily dose or nutritional choice. With better understanding of insulin action, we can now free patients to make choices about their diet and lifestyle, with the ability to adjust insulin dose around those choices. However this degree of self-care requires training.
NICE guidance 2004 states that all patients should be offered an education programme to learn skills of insulin self-adjustment. NICE outlined 5 key elements of an adult structured educational programme, fulfilled by the DAFNE (dose adjustment for normal eating) programme. DAFNE has been running for over 10 years, and has excellent results in terms of patient satisfaction and improving diabetes control. Despite this, and provision of very successful programmes in South London, uptake for DAFNE there is around 30%.
This study will assess the barriers to attendance at patient education within our type 1 diabetic population. We will use mixed methods including patient surveys, semi-structured interviews and focus groups to identify reasons for non-attendance. We will question healthcare professionals to identify any referral bias. Having identified barriers, both within people with diabetes and healthcare professionals, we will run focus groups to learn how redesign of the programme could be managed to suit the needs of our local population.
REC name
London - Dulwich Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/LO/1751
Date of REC Opinion
9 Dec 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion