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Posted on 15 Nov 2024

Nottinghamshire Healthcare’s DESMOND team won the Innovation Award at the recent national Celebrating DESMOND Awards.

DESMOND ( Diabetes Education and Self Management for Ongoing and Newly Diagnosed) programme provides education and self management skills for adults with Type 2 Diabetes across Nottinghamshire County. They won for their forward thinking, flexible and patient-centred approach to making changes to the service.

DESMOND uses a variety of learning styles and visual aids. It provides consistent, evidence based messages to patients to help people self-manage their condition, therefore improving health outcomes such as appropriate levels of HbA1c (the average amount of glucose in your blood over 2–3 months), and weight reduction.

The team is always striving to make positive changes to improve the service. This includes improving the way in which DESMOND sessions are delivered to or accessed by participants, but also methods of improving educator experience and knowledge, meaning as a team they are always providing the highest standard of care. 

Amy Eagle, Care Group Director – Community Health Services, Nottinghamshire Healthcare said: “Congratulations to the team on this fantastic achievement. They work really hard to deliver excellent education, to ensure patients have the tools they need to manage their condition, and minimise any risk of further health issues. This recognition is really well deserved.”

They have also been doing a lot of work with other colleagues working with type 2 Diabetes, such as practice nurses and other health care professionals, encouraging them to observe the course so that they can be better informed when discussing with patients and help to provide the consistent messages.

There are lots of reasons why participants may choose not to attend DESMOND sessions and the team are working to try and understand these reasons, look at any potential barriers, and help more people to access them. As part of this work, they have simplified the self-referral process to make it easier for patients to use. 

They have also looked at how they can adapt their information to ensure it is inclusive of all age groups. A future aim is to pilot a separate DESMOND group for the under 40s.

Rebecca Januszczyk, Community Diabetes Dietitian said “As a team we are innovative, proactive, flexible and adaptable to change. During sessions, we are experienced in reading the energy of a group, and adapting where needed. Our mindset is to continually ensure patients have the best experience whilst on the course, but also be able to access the most appropriate care for them and make this care more accessible.

We were really proud to win this award.”

To find out more information on the programme, please visit our website.