UHNM diabetes nurse helps lead award-winning engagement programme

A UHNM nurse specialist has helped to lead an award-winning project which helps people with diabetes. Tamsin Fletcher-Salt (pictured) worked virtually with a multidisciplinary team through the earlier stages of the pandemic to create ‘Diabetes 101’ - a virtual service set up on Twitter in March 2020 in response to the pandemic and first national UK lockdown.

The team behind the project have now won the ‘Unsung Hero’ award from the ‘Quality in Care Programme 2021’.

Tamsin said: “We were online every day during the first lockdown and also did tweetorials on relevant subjects related to diabetes. We covered the whole country but we never met during this time and have only subsequently met up after lockdowns ended.

“At this time people living with diabetes were extremely anxious. Misinformation was a problem, and capacity in specialist diabetes teams was overwhelmed. The account disseminated reliable information, stability and support to people living with diabetes.

“As a team we used social media in an innovative way. We did this outside of our day-to-day work and I feel it’s a fantastic example of cross-team working which genuinely kept people out of hospital. I am very proud of the team and everybody involved.”

The project was staffed voluntarily by 19 multidisciplinary healthcare professionals and the account has more than 6,000 followers.