Today is a writing day - preparing my share of an article for publication. The article will tell the story of the original research for this project which was undertaken in Glasgow and Bradford and the interventions that have been developed as a result. See http://bit.ly/10UpiDqIt has reminded me to post these photos of our poster which was displayed at the Diabetes UK Professionals Conference in mid-March.
I spent one day at this impressive three day gathering of hundreds of people who are working on diabetes.
The physical presence of various drug companies (all serving lovely coffee) brought home the fact that the huge rise in numbers of people with diabetes means a huge rise in cost to the NHS - and provides a correspondingly great rise in business opportunities! It is an ill wind..........
I enjoyed a range of presentations especially the lunchtime one about the Diabetes Year of Care. There were three fascinating presentations on the different psychological approaches that can be taken to supporting people with diabetes. That session was imaginatively titled 'Oranges are not the only fruit'!
The conference was a showcase for all aspects of the work being carried out in relation to diabetes. The sheer scale of the conference put our relatively small experiment into context. It would have been easy to feel that our efforts seemed so simplistic amongst a great deal of visible complexity.
And yet the truth is that success in managing diabetes and achieving the best outcomes lies for the most part in the hands of the people who have the disease. They are the key actors. All efforts to discover from people what supports and enables them to take positive action are worth making.
