I don't know(or care, to be perfectly honest) enough about T2 to know how different it is in daily management from T1, but it seems to me that there is far too much obsession over HbA1c rather than figuring out the cause of actual hypos and hypers on these forums, no? There also seems to be a lot of complaining(especially from T2s) over doctors and nurses being idiots and incompetent and so on, which makes me wonder if there is some sort of victim complex going on in at least some people. I've had appointments in two different countries with people from even more different countries over 15 years as a diabetic, I've never had any even close to as bad experiences as seem to frequently be described on here despite being according to myself a very bad patient in that I don't care enough about how I take care of myself and being very open about it to them.
I think T1s and T2s get treated very differently by the "professionals".
T1s - we're all on insulin, so as long as we can convince our specialists we're numerate we get help to manage the disease ourselves rather than lectures.
T2s- never get to see a specialist (maybe if they move to insulin?), rely on competence of GP's nurse, who handles diabetes along with lots of other things. There are so many of them that there's no time other than to hand out metformin and tell them that they shouldn't blood test as it will only worry them? (Though to be fair, my father's T2 and has been told this, and his condition has been stable for the last 7 years on 1500mg metformin per day.He's 87, has a moderately but not very low carb diet, and it's not going to be diabetes that kills him.) Also, it's automatically assumed that younger (under 50,60?) T2s are going to progress to insulin eventually (which totally sucks IMO as they have to have huge quantities compared to T1s, and they still can't metabolise carbs properly).
BUt havingsaid that, there are good nurses and less than good ones, just as there are with consultants, so there's an element of luck of the draw as to whether you get someone who can help you.