Nottinghamshire DESMOND team takes home Innovation award
The Nottingham team
The Innovation award goes to the person or team who has contributed to developing and testing new, innovative ideas in their DESMOND service. At the 2024 DESMOND awards, that team was Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.
The Nottinghamshire DESMOND team have been working hard to improve the experience for their participants. The team shared: “As a DESMOND team we are always striving to make positive changes to improve the service. This includes improving the way in which DESMOND sessions are delivered or accessed by participants, but also methods of improving educator experience and knowledge, meaning as a team we are always providing the highest standard of care.”
Accessibility has been a key priority for the Nottinghamshire team, they explain: “We know that many participants who are referred to DESMOND do not opt in to doing the course. We appreciate that participants must face barriers to attending. We try to find out what these barriers are and what we can do to help make DESMOND more accessible.”
To improve the opt-in rate for DESMOND, the team partnered with four GP surgeries to explore the reasons participants chose not to attend. This led the team to work on ways to tailor their future DESMOND education to under-represented groups to improve accessibility.
The Nottinghamshire team has been working with the local Deaf society community development officer to ensure their DESMOND delivery meets the needs of people who are D/deaf.
Alongside this, cases of early-onset type 2 diabetes (people 18-40 years of age diagnosed with type 2 diabetes) are increasing rapidly. The Nottinghamshire team has been exploring the ways in which the DESMOND programme can be targeted at younger people living with type 2 diabetes at their regular CPD sessions. This includes increasing the number of virtual Saturday sessions the team offers.
“The Nottinghamshire DESMOND team has worked tirelessly over many years to innovate and adapt their DESMOND service to meet the changing needs of their patient population,” celebrates Alison Northern, LDC Implementation and DESMOND Lead. “Being able to reward their hard work with this award is an honour. Keep up the great work!”
Rebecca Januszczyk, Community Diabetes Dietitian and DESMOND Educator, shared how the team felt when they heard they had received the Innovation award: “We worked together as a team to be innovative, proactive, flexible, and adaptable to change. Our mindset is to continually ensure participants have the best experience while on the course and be able to access the most appropriate care.
“We receive excellent feedback from group participants, students and staff observing our DESMOND groups, giving us an insight day to day into how beneficial the groups are. To be recognised further by winning the national DESMOND Innovation Award is a fantastic achievement and drives us forward to continue making positive improvements to the service.”