Would you agree that a GP who has just come off the Warwick course and hasn't heard of Late onset T1 can be called an 'expert'. This GP is in other ways an excellent GP but don't assume that the diabetes training GPs and DNs receive makes them an expert. It's many years experience and the ability to absorb and sift information (if they have the time) that makes a good diabetes HCP. My DN is one of those but has sadly moved on with a promotion.
No, I would disagree entirely for the simple reason that they are General Practitioners (as you have also stated). I do think that people sometimes expect GP's and DN's to know too much. They are a front line of diagnosis and treatment and the specialist diabetes teams and those clever folks wearing lab coats and staring down microscopes are the experts or specialists. The blurred line, as I see it, comes when GP's or DN's insist on telling diabetics living with the condition what to do when the diabetic is saying "no, that doesn't work".
But yes, like us diabetics, the GP's etc need to learn from experience. They will never be diabetic experts but you and I will certainly, if we want to be, be experts on managing our diabetes. I think I'm pretty **** good at it (he says 24hrs after giving blood for the latest Hba1c! Gulp!) but I know nothing in the grand scheme of things as to the biology of my condition.
@Brightside - I do get where you are coming from. We, as individuals, tend to look at a very narrow spectrum. The experts do, in my opinion, consider a much broader spectrum in their research and have a vastly deeper understanding of what biologically is happening. What they can't ever really do, and this forum plugs the gap, is present a solution or plan for each individual case as we are all so very different. On this forum, however, you can ask any question and there's a 99.9% certainty that someone will be able to help based on their experience. It may not be a 100% "this will work" answer but if it's worked for them why not give it a go? I do think that sometime there is a tendency on forums for people to rubbish an experts opinion and unless you are trained and work in the same area as that person, and can produce the research of your own to offer an alternative, then maybe you shouldn't.