This was the theme of a conference held earlier this year and hosted by NHS Diabetes (formerly National Diabetes Support Team) and attended by over 100 delegates including service users, medical consultants, healthcare professionals and Diabetes UK.
The main purpose of the event was to share thoughts, views and experiences and look at how best NHS Direct can help address challenging issues - the stakeholder engagement being the key ingredient to the success of this project.
Speakers on the day included Rowan Hillson MBE (National Clinical Director for Diabetes), Richard Lane OBE (President of Diabetes UK), Jacqui Double, a service user on behalf of her two sons, and Enid Povey (National Clinical Development Manager for NHS Direct).
Findings from the conference have been summarised and thematically grouped to allow for easier assessment of the kinds of changes people wanted.
Along with specialist centres, more training in diabetes and better signposting to specialist advice on medication, NHS Direct will be looking at how it can improve its own support systems.
An initial step involves the development of a specific symptomatic algorithm for the assessment of calls regarding diabetes.
