Thank you all for your replies. I wrote a reasoned letter to the Practice Administrator and got a very apologetic reply saying that they would consider the points I made at their next meeting. I haven't yet been to see the diabetic nurse who wrote the letter, but have an appointment to do so in July. I have been attending to see a doctor for blood test results and advice and asked what the purpose of the diabetic nurse role was (i.e., I wanted a reasoned argument for seeing a nurse rather than a doctor). The reason I got was that in a practice of many doctors, patients may not see the same doctor on consecutive visits and the diabetic nurse keeps the records and can prescribe/change medication. I checked that I had understood correctly and asked "so it is entirely for continuity"? and was told yes. This raises far more issues than it answers, as I get the impression on here that the diabetic nurse is meant to be an 'expert' who is preferable to seeing a GP because of superior knowledge in this one area. However, if I was to be cynical I might think that the invention of a diabetes clinic is one which hives off a relatively large proportion of patients and places them in the care of a relatively junior (and therefore less well paid) member of staff, thereby saving practices money. The one occasion when I did see the diabetic nurse, she told me that I shouldn't measure my blood sugar myself (as it was against NHS guidelines) and advised me to stick to the standard low fat/high carb diet which she said was best for me (even though I knew that my blood sugars had fallen through low carbing). She did not respond adequately to the questions I asked and I felt that I was being a nuisance by asking them. I have some worries that nurses, although well educated (with the introduction of nursing degrees), do not have a medical degree and cannot make the same judgements as doctors. I say this even though doctors seem to use a computer 'tick list' to diagnose/make clinical judgements these days (making everyone feel like a collection of statistics rather than an individual). I know enough about diabetes through researching it, to understand that I know nothing - and to understand that the medical profession itself does not fully understand how it works (they don't know why gastric bypass works, for example). In my last visit, the doctor mentioned some new research which showed that a very low calorie diet for 6 weeks had successfully remitted diabetes in a number of patients (although the number of subjects was low) and advised me to read it and see what I thought (obviously not advising me to do it!).
Type 2 (1000 mg Glucophage)
Hypothyroid (1.25mg Thyroxine)
Last HBA1c 8.5 (up on previous despite doing everything the same)