Kooky, that's a good point. There's no point in urging people to come forward and be tested, if there's no support when they have. As a point of comparison, my husband had a Retinal Artery Occlusion the other day ( aka an eye stroke). Because of the National Stroke Initiative, he was referred to the TIA clinic, and spent a whole morning being thoroughly tested for everything, and now there are follow up appointments, further tests, etc. He's very fit, and not overweight, so they are scratching their heads a bit, but if this were diabetes we were talking about, I suspect he'd have been given some pills and a diet sheet and sent on his way.
It is a major problem, I think
My aftercare was very good after diagnosis, but I think that a) I'm lucky with my surgery and the DSNs at my clinic, and b) a lot of fuss was made about the fact that I had had a suspected heart attack - in fact that was treated much more seriously than the diabetes. I had to seek help with diabetes problems post-diagnosis, but they were on my back all the time about my heart. And c) I'm Type 1.
A couple of years after my diagnosis I was invited by my consultant to act as a patient representative on a committee discussing the future of diabetes care in my area. I was very surprised to hear it was generally very poor quality, and shocked to hear that many areas within the region were particularly bad since it was known that a lot of GPs didn't find diabetes 'sexy' and thought it largely self-inflicted and not worth spending much time on
😱 It's no surprise, then, that I hear constantly from people here, particularly Type 2 or potentially misdiagnosed Type1, about the extremely poor levels of care they are receiving. This is what needs addressing - diabetes isn't going to go away, and whilst there should be initiatives to try and educate people to take preventative action for those already diagnosed there should be EVERY effort made to ensure that they are well-educated, provided with appropriate tools and training and regularly assessed. I think this assessment should include discussing test strip readings, individual diets and lifestyles, and a very pro-active approach so that after the first year the 'burden' on the NHS is hugely diminished because the patient is able to successfully self-manage.
The opposite is happening
It's like they are saying 'we told you not to get it, now you have so don't expect much sympathy because it's your own fault and it's up to you to live with it and the consequences'. Often, those consequences are spelled out to put the fear of god into the patient - that it is progressive, they will inevitably get worse, threaten them with insulin and be continually critical and negative without really having any good advice to offer because the GPs and nurses themselves are covering up their lack of current knowledge. People become depressed, fatalistic, control gets worse (as predicted by the HCPs) and they lose their quality of life
Diabetes UK, if they really want to support people with diabetes everywhere, need to take a much harder line in holding the medical profession to account, standards must be raised to those in the best surgeries and clinics. This affects at least 3.5m people and 10% of the NHS budget. The changes uner the new CCGs appear, anecdotally, to be concentrating purely on current cost-reduction by limiting access to care, education and tools, and actually undermining the likelihood of what I have just suggested from ever happening
