The hierarchic attitude roots in education from the age of 3-4, and it affects relationships with any kind of health care staff. You don’t get paid much as a doctor in Hungary, and there is never enough money in the healthcare, which I suppose makes the health care team frustrated. Most people go to be doctors for the prestige. But I have to admit, My diabetologist was one rare unemphatic, with a wide reputation for it. But they were all well trained and more knowledgeable than the patients.
When I left Hungary, there was still a different attitude about rapid analoges, like they are rewards for those who carb count well, not like here, where they are almost the only ones in use. I suppose if they think the patient doesn’t carb count any more, than they put them back on the old insulin regime. I don’t know how could I work shifts on the old ones, I struggle to get my Lantus adjusted for busy shifts within 3 days, a human insulin only treatment could even make me unemployed, at least until I would find a job to suit my insulin. I remember, I had to beg for years for Novorapid, and when I got it at the age of 14, I just had my snacks officially skipped (had to keep eating midday to keep my glucose on 4 anyway, which I never told my very ‘kind’ diabetologist.) I was 19 and about to leave the country, when I had my first carb to insulin unit ratio until than, it was just my ‘snack-free Actrapid.’
Pumps are a half or non funded rare thing, and CGMs are a hospital thing to prove, that the patient can have good glucose for three days laying in a hospital bed, so it must be the patient overeating from 3am to 8-9am messing up the rest of the day (I had that particular humiliation in front of my entire medical team.)
I still have a sort of white coat fear, last time I was in the waiting room a nurse assumed I was a newbie, because I get so nervous like before an exam.
But there are some things I am not sure about in UK diabetic care, like do you take your readings to the appointment, or you just explain the main patterns? Last time I was at the western the diabetologist looked like I gave her too many numbers. I thought it’s better to check more before going, to have something to work with.