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glucose books and diabetic nurses

T

Tracey167

Well-Known Member
Messages
309
Location
Essex
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
Hi

just wanted to know when you go and visit your diabetic nurse how far back in your blood glucose book does the nurse go back to check your readings, because the diabetes nurses here only go back 2 weeks which i think is not far back enough especially after not seeing them for 3-4 months. How can they judge your sugar levels by just going back 2 weeks.

tracey167
 
They are mainly interested in your HbA1c results which give them an average. Unless you tell them about a specific problem, they will not trawl through months of individual readings. They don't have the time to be fair. I know it's annoying, I religiously keep all my readings and hand them over but same as you, last couple of weeks or so and that's it. I can understand it though. If I was ever worried about my levels suddenly changing, I'd inform them and I'm sure they would look if required.



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In my case I spreadsheet everything, trends, graphs, automatic flagging of highs/lows etc, carb ingestion, I:C ratios and so on. This makes it very easy to review a lot of data very quickly and home in on specifics as necessary.

I also regularly exchange e-mails with the relevant nurse and send specific data that I want them to look at. Makes for a less intensive short duration appointment.
 
You can sort of understand the concentration on the last couple of weeks.
If there was an issue a couple of months ago and you sorted it out there's no point in going over it - would assume you know what happened and dealt with it.

The problem is that people will probably change their approach knowing that a meeting is coming up so it's a good idea to mention earlier issues/lifestyle.

Just noticed this is in the type 1 forum - I try not to comment on things here because I don't have any experience.
I would have expected though that the nurse would go back over all the records because the concern is not just complications.
Don't know much about it though.
 
Tracey167 said:
just wanted to know when you go and visit your diabetic nurse how far back in your blood glucose book does the nurse go back to check your readings, because the diabetes nurses here only go back 2 weeks which i think is not far back enough especially after not seeing them for 3-4 months. How can they judge your sugar levels by just going back 2 weeks.
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I take my meter along and they download the previous 30 days readings, after which we will discuss them together if there's any concerns.

TBH I rarely keep a bg record book unless my control suddenly goes out the window or start to have unexplained hypo's, the 30 days average whilst looking at the SD is a good indicator of bg control together with the Hba1c result, provided the previous 2 weeks readings are a true reflection of your everyday control Tracey then it should be enough!
 
Hi
Thanks for your replies, the reason i am not happy is my last appointment the diabetes nurse looked at 2 weeks of my record book and claimed my hypos are mainly happening in the morning and late morning BUT if she had turned back 1 or 2 pages more she would have seen there are hypos in the afternoon and evening as well. Then to top it off they write there reports up claiming they have spoke to me in great depth in ways to stop hypos that was rubbish they never spoke to me in great depth at all, so to me i see that as faulse information that is being sent to my doctor (i have made my doctor aware of this). When i lived in Kent the diabetic nurses looked through my book properly and did'nt talk to me as if i was an idiot, it seems here in Essex the care for patients is very poor.

I thought at first i was over reacting but when my husband rang the diabetes team manager she told him that the nurses are in a rush, well thats not good they should'nt be rushing this is peoples life they are dealing with.

sorry for the moan


tracey167
 
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