The DESMOND Awards 2023
On Wednesday 11 October, healthcare teams from all over the UK came together at the Leicester Diabetes Centre (LDC) to celebrate the DESMOND Awards.
Alison Northern, Implementation Lead for LDC, explains: “The DESMOND Awards provide an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the individuals and teams who go above and beyond to provide the best education for people living with and at risk of type 2 diabetes in their communities.
“This year is extra special for us as we are celebrating 20 years of DESMOND. It was fantastic to be able to share a birthday cake with all our award nominees, nominators and winners.”
Individuals and teams were nominated by their colleagues. The award categories and winners were:
The Deirdre McGowan Educator of the Year
This award is given to someone who has made a difference to the lives of people with or at risk of type 2 diabetes. This person has shown an outstanding commitment to the DESMOND philosophy and principles. Not only have they supported participants, but they have also supported and mentored fellow educators.
Winner: Christopher Henry (South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust)
Christopher Henry is a Diabetes Assistant at the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust. Christopher has gone above and beyond in his work as an Accredited DESMOND Educator, in the last year he delivered 37 DESMOND courses, rearranging his hours and leave to run evening and weekend courses to improve accessibility for participants. His humour, compassion and kind manner have been commented on by both participants and colleagues, along with his commitment and dedication to DESMOND and the empowerment of people with type 2 diabetes. He has also been instrumental in supporting the whole team to learn how to deliver virtual DESMOND courses, something some team members found challenging.
Christopher also goes the extra mile when mentoring others. Not only does he mentor all the new DESMOND Educators he also welcomes other colleagues including dietetic and nursing students, and pharmacists to come and shadow sessions. Christopher is also key to the administration and promotion of the DESMOND service across the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland; including presenting at local diabetes support groups.
Highly commended: Nicky Higgins, North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust
Team of the Year
This award goes to a team that has been exceptional at delivering high-quality education to people with or at risk of type 2 diabetes. This team always strives to be the best at what they do.
Winner: South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust
South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust have spent a lot of time remodeling and improving all elements of their DESMOND service. This includes the introduction of lay and non-registered staff as Educators to ensure a service that could fully meet the needs of the local population group by doubling the number of courses that could be offered, as well as the time/days of these. Based on participant feedback, the team has adjusted their course schedule to run evening and weekend courses to make it easier for participants to attend.
The team has worked tirelessly to adapt their whole booking process from a spoke-type design to a centralised set-up. This has had a significant impact on reducing waiting lists and has enabled more streamlined reporting; that now provides the opportunity to target promotion in those areas where uptake is low.
During the pandemic, the team transitioned to virtual courses and they have used this experience to continue to provide virtual group options while also bringing back in-person training for those who are less confident with technology. They plan to provide a 60:40 face-to-face and virtual split going forward which improves accessibility, especially as they cover a wide geographical area.
The dedication to ensuring participants are at the heart of all decision making was apparent throughout the application.
Highly commended: Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust
Highly commended: Northern Health and Social Care Trust
Innovation
This award goes to the person or team who has contributed to developing and testing new innovative ideas in their DESMOND service.
Winner: Government of Jersey: Health and Community Services
To be accredited as a DESMOND educator the prospective educator must deliver the DESMOND programme to participants while a Quality Development Assessor monitors their session The Jersey team, Angela Buesnel and Gemma Ibberson became the first team to use live streaming for this purpose. By using live streaming, the Quality Development Assessor was able to watch the Educators delivering the face-to-face sessions with participants remotely instead of needing to travel to the site. This innovation has laid the way for remote observation of face-to-face sessions, allowing DESMOND sites to receive more support from the DESMOND head office without the need for travel.
Highly commended: Lambeth Diabetes Intermediate Care Team
Impact
This award goes to the person or team who can show, both qualitatively and quantitatively, that they have had a meaningful impact on the lives of people with or at risk of type 2 diabetes
Winner: Northamptonshire Diabetes Multi-Disciplinary Team, NHFT
Throughout the last few years, the Northamptonshire team has been working on a number of key projects to ultimately increase the impact their service has on people with type 2 diabetes. The Northampton team worked with the Clinical Pathway Lead in Integrated Care Northamptonshire to create a bespoke DESMOND e-referral form which has now been implemented with all GP practices in Northamptonshire. This has increased both the accuracy and speed of referrals to DESMOND reducing the delays in the administration process by automatically merging clinical details which makes information about diabetes risk more readily available to participants. Referrals have increased since implementation with over 200 per month. This helps participants to be more informed about their progress, improving motivation to continue with medication and long-term lifestyle changes.
Reporting back to referrers has been improved to ensure GP records contain more accurate data regarding the outcome of the referral, helping the GP/Practice staff to have more meaningful conversations with patients after they have attended DESMOND.
Plus, additional funding was secured to revise the telephony and messaging systems that supported their administration; ensuring high quality end-to-end service. This has all had a positive impact – participants were asked to score how confident they felt about managing their type 2 diabetes before and after DESMOND. The average score before DESMOND was 5 and after participating in the course, the average score was 8.3, which highlights the great impact the Northamptonshire team is having for people with type 2 diabetes across their local area.
Highly commended: Wythenshawe Diabetes Specialist Nurse Service (MFT)
Excellence
This award is given to the person or team who has gone above and beyond and been exemplary in what they have achieved.
Winner: North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust
Zoe Whitfield and Julie Wright, the Structured Education Coordinators for the North Cumbria Hospitals Trust went above and beyond in their work this year. Post-covid the Cumbria DESMOND courses were struggling with attendance as participants were concerned about attending face-to-face. To add to the challenge there were seven new DESMOND educators and two new Injectable Therapies Toolkit educators joining the team. Zoe and Julie made a fantastic team despite working over 40 miles apart! Through their hard work and never-ending enthusiasm, the courses are now fully attended again, and they have launched virtual, evening and Saturday courses to make it easier for participants to attend. They have also created monthly educator meetings to support the new educators and promote DESMOND at both public and primary care staff events across North Cumbria. The new team members said their support has been great and that Zoe and Julie resolve any issues straight away. One was quoted as saying ‘we could not be without them!’
Highly commended: Diabetes Education Team, Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust