Hypo Awareness Week 2018

It has been a goal of ours to raise hypo awareness and encourage the care workforce in our locality to take part in this campaign; to then subsequently maintain best practice.  To this end, as well as face to face interactions, we made use of technology and our wider contacts to advertise the campaign.

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This year we planned and ran a “Snapshot training morning” on 17 September in Norfolk, which included a session entitled “Hypo or not a hypo, that is the question!”.  Over 70 delegates took part in an interactive hypo ‘last person standing’ game (with prizes!) and heard from an individual, who came along with his guide dog Quizzy, what it is like to experience hypos.  We highlighted the CQC guidance for inspectors visiting care homes (which includes having the availability of a fully-stocked and maintained hypoglycaemia kit).  The audience were informed about hypo awareness week and encouraged to take part by providing them with the website details. 

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For us, hypo awareness is relevant all year round; hence a similar event is taking place in Suffolk on 15 November 2018. 

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Proudly wearing our t-shirts, on Monday 24 Sept we ran a ‘Diabetes Awareness and Glucometer Training’ workshop and continued to share information via social media and email communications throughout the week.

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We have also further developed our “Diabetes Information Postcard” providing:

• diabetes competency framework for care homes carers and nurses

• useful links to various resources

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We are delighted that all of this has culminated in receiving a 'highly commended' certificate from the judges of the Hypo Awareness Excellence Award 2018.

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A number of organisations helped us to spread the word about this national campaign, such as Norfolk & Suffolk Care Support, Norfolk Independent Care, Care Development East, Suffolk Association of Independent Care Providers, Opening Doors, and the Care Homes team at Ipswich and East Suffolk & West Suffolk Clinical Commissioning Groups. Thank you for all your assistance - we wanted to ensure that the local care workforce heard about this great initiative and were inspired to take part.