Diabetes professionals??

K

Key_master_

Well-Known Member
Messages
223
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Good afternoon all, just wondering if anyone on here is a diabetes professional. (Dietians, nurses and consultants) I really want to get into diabetes care now and have the opportunity to retrain or study.

I have an interview later with my local college to see about getting onto an access course to get into nursing as that’s the way I’ve been told you have to get into it. I’ve been a mature student before so the study doesn’t bother me.

Any advice or help would be much appreciated..

Thanks in adavance ;)
 
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W

wildtoast

Well-Known Member
Messages
60
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
I'm not a diabetes professional but I am a clinical pharmacist in a hospital, I can share what I know about our diabetic nurses in our hospital :)

Diabetic Specialist Nurse is as the name suggests quite a specialised area - they are band 6s or 7s on the NHS payscale whereas a normal staff nurse on a ward would be a band 5. They usually have experience of working in adult medicine before specialising, and have quite a different role to other nurses. They tend to 'float' around the wards seeing patients admitted who either already have diabetes or are diagnosed during their admission and do the initial education, and have clinic appointments where outpatients come into see them - so they have quite an odd structure to their day and work quite independently a lot of the time, going back to the team and/or the consultant when needed.

I guess if nursing is what you're most interested in it seems like you need to be motivated enough to train to be (and work for a couple of years as) a general adult nurse first as I don't think you can just study around diabetes, which might seem like a very long way round of getting involved in diabetes care! If there are any DSNs on here who know differently please feel free to correct me! Sorry if that isn't what you want to hear, just sharing what I've picked up from work and since my own very recent diagnosis.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do, what did you do before? I always love a good story of someone completely changing their career!
 
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