A typical conference, yesterday
So this weekend was the first time in my adult life I’d been in a group of more than 15 diabetics who weren’t nervously waiting to be talked to by the consultant. I was willing attendee of this site’s official favourite charity Diabetes UK at The Big Event held at Warwick University – confusingly located near Coventry.
After initially grabbing our name-tags at registration we then went out to the sports hall where the complimentary childcare was being organised and deposited two excited children. As they were also looking after diabetic children we managed to skip the detailed drop-off required for those kids with more specific medical requirements. The childcare was run jointly by Fit4Sport and Diabetes UK volunteers and their families.
On return to the main building we were met by the charity’s President, Richard Lane. A wonderfully welcoming man who seemed very impressed by my parents’ decision to get me a life membership soon after diagnosis. He then called over Barbara Young who was less impressed and gave a smiling comment of “Well, we have made a net loss with you haven’t we.”
We then proceeded upstairs to the Exhibition Hall (a slightly grand name for a large conference room) to see stands from some well-known and not so well-known names in the field of diabetes care. Those present included Bayer, NIHR Diabetes Research Network, Mylife Diabetes Care, Lacorium Health, Cellnovo, Mind, Abbott and Diabetes and Diverse Communities. In this room was also a ;
Dave,
Thanks for the comprehensive report-back.
Workshop 1 bullet 3 ‘…ask the person checking your feet if in clinic or GP whether they are trained to know what to look for’.
That’s good advice, except of course they will never know what they don’t know – and always answer yes .
I prefer the alternative approach of personally knowing what they should be looking you can then judge competence – if not competent take appropriate action eg raise the matter higher up the food chain and/or exercise patient choice next time. Of course, this applies to all HCP not just Pods & GPs.
The relevant DUK leaflet is good, but unfortunately buried on their website and deserves to be more prominent. It can be found http://www.diabetes.org.uk/Documents/Guide%20to%20diabetes/monitoring/What-footcare-to-expect.0212.pdf
Brian
Thanks @brian, and thanks for the link. you are of course right and as much as anything the first session was about actually telling what the 15 things actually meant.
Hopefully at least some people there took a little bit of it away to challenge their diabetes team with.
Interesting stuff, thanks Dave. Sounds like a great day. It’s so hard to run an event that caters for Type1 & 2 without someone feeling left out but it sounds like they managed it.
It was good day and you’re right. I don’t know the official figures but based on the room sizes I think there was as many Type 1s as 2s, if not more. Keeping everyone happy is never easy and the wide range of subjects ticked most boxes for me.
Great write up and sounds like an excellent event. Thanks too for the Food Labelling Consultation alert. I’ve written an ranty email to them and posted on the blog about it too 🙂
Thanks Mike. The more people who input the more likely it will be to make a difference.
Good summary of the day Dave – it sounds to me like I missed an opportunity for type 1’s to get together and moan about how ‘hard’ things are and also have a load of ex used-car salesmen flog their particular units to the potential cash-cows for future sales.. Winner!