Diabetes

Background

The Diabetes National Service Framework (NSF) Standards, published in 2001, set out the first ever set of national standards for the treatment of diabetes. The NSF’s 12 standards cover all aspects of diabetes care and prevention, and together with the delivery strategy, sets out a 10 year programme of change and improvement which will raise the quality of services and reduce unacceptable variations.

Diabetes is a chronic and progressive disease that has an impact upon almost every aspect of life. Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in people of working age in the UK. It affects infants, children, young people and adults of all ages, and is becoming more common. There are an estimated 2.35 million people with diabetes in England. This is predicted to grow to more than 2.5 million by 2010 - 9% of which will be due to an increase in obesity.

Life expectancy is reduced by at least fifteen years for someone with type one diabetes. In type two diabetes, which is preventable in two thirds of people who have it, life expectancy is reduced by up to 10 years. It is estimated that around 90% of people with diabetes have type two.

Workforce Planning
For the diabetes workforce there are particular challenges caused by the increasing number of people diagnosed with the condition accompanied by an increasing number of new drugs to improve diabetes care. However the major transformation that is required in the diabetes workforce is not just seeing more patients or getting to grips with new protocols it is a cultural shift. That shift is to develop a truly patient centred workforce that supports people with diabetes in their own self management of their condition.

A workforce that overcomes the traditional “This is what you do” way of working to one that fully engages people in promoting and improving their own care. A workforce that recognises the necessity of multi-disciplinary teams and the vital role of integrated care between primary and specialist providers.

The National Diabetes Workforce Strategy (2007) meets a real need in spelling out in very clear terms what the overarching principles are that determine what competences and skills a local diabetes workforce needs to posses and how they can go about working with these. It also identifies, equally clearly, what the aims of the strategy are.

A comprehensive set of competency frameworks exists for the whole diabetes community. These can all be found here >>>

The Department of Health published Workforce Matters: A Good Practice Guide to Role Redesign in Diabetes Care (2002). This document highlights a practical approach to job redesign that will benefit people with diabetes and professionals as they struggle to provide improved services against a backdrop of rising demand.

Workforce projects team
Workforce planning raises several issues, for example:

• New models of care
• New types of working across organisational boundaries and new settings
• Potential new or extended roles
• New education and training needs
• A stronger emphasis on self care and patient empowerment.

Workforce Projects Team has developed the Six Step Methodology to Integrated Workforce Planning to address these issues. The main aim of the six steps is to set out in a practical framework those elements that should be in any workforce plan.

The Department of Health have published Workforce Matters: A Good Practice Guide to Role Redesign in Diabetes Care. This document highlights a practical approach to job redesign that will benefit people with diabetes and professionals as they struggle to provide improved services against a backdrop of rising demand.