Foot Care when you have Diabetes

I am a member of the Clare Type 1 Diabetes Support group and our guest speaker last month is a podiatrist from the local health centre (Thank you, Doireann). I know that most people with diabetes already know the basics of taking care of your feet, especially if you have been around diabetes for a couple of decades. But I decided to post about our meeting because the pathway to podiatry care for people with diabetes has changed a little in recent years and that is worth sharing this information (IMO).

But I have included an article which, coincidently, was published online the same week as our meeting, and contains some of the basics to lead up to the local information, if you would like a reminder as to why it's soooo important to look after feet.

How to access Diabetic Foot Care?

Referrals to your local podiatry service for people with diabetes are available from your GP, Public Health Nurse, Community Nurse, or Diabetes Clinic.

In Co. Clare, you can avail of a self referral form which is available at the Health Centre on Bindon Street in Ennis. It’s not available online. And we believe that this option is only available in Co. Clare.

Your very first foot screening with your podiatrist will assess you and place your feet in one of three categories; Low, Moderate or High risk.

If you are low risk, you may be referred back to your GP’s surgery for your annual foot exam. If this is the case then it will be your responsibility to schedule this. If you are referred to your GP, it’s really important that you keep a record of when your last foot check was and when to schedule your next one.

If you are Moderate or high risk of diabetes foot disease then you will probably continue to be seen in the Diabetic Foot Clinic, where they will send out your appointment to you in the post.

However, there are instances where the clinics fall behind in their appointments and it would be wise if you kept a record of when your last foot exam was and when your next one should be.

You can find more information from the HSE's Model of Care for the Diabetic Foot document, which was revised in October 2014.

*Special Note

At our meeting some people pointed out that their feet are checked at their regular diabetes clinic appointment.

While this is a good "spot check", if your foot check does not include a test using a tuning fork and a Monofilament tool, it is NOT a full foot exam.

Everybody with diabetes in Ireland should have a foot check by a podiatrist, children included, every year.

At your annual foot exam your healthcare professional will;

• Look at your feet for signs of problems, especially if you have nerve damage
• Test the sense of feeling in your feet using a Monofilament tool.
• Test how well blood is flowing to your legs and feet
• Show you how to care for your feet

Here's to Happy Feet!

Regards,

Grainne

Type 1 Diabetes Model of Care for Children and Teens

Some weeks back you may remember I posted about the postponement, indefinitely, of the publication of the Health Service's Model of Care Document for children and teenagers with Type 1 diabetes. It’s kind of like the Irish version of the NICE guidelines being used in the UK. And while there is no real news just yet, there is progress on its publication.

This is an excerpt from the attached letter I received. "As you can appreciate any model of care or other documents which come from the national clinical programmes must go through a process of public consultation, clinical advisory group sign off and the HSE senior management sign off prior to launch and implementation."

This consultation process is still taking place but the HSE are working towards a launch date of mid December.

I would personally like to thank the two Clare TD's, Timmy Dooley & Joe Carey, who emailed me with updates on this issue. In particular, Deputy Timmy Dooley who even emailed me almost every week, even when there was no news. But his emails reassured me that he was still working on it.

I have also been led to believe that TD's all around the country received similar letters from their constituents. If that's you; I sincerely thank you for taking the time to do that. I know it's not easy to find the time to do something like that. And you will probably have received the response below from your letters to TD's.

So, even though we are not there yet, you are all helping to make progress.

PQ 38451-15 Paediatric Diabetes MoC_Timmy Dooley

Be the Giant Slayer! 

Grainne

What's happening with Thriveabetes 2016?

Don't ask!!! No, just kidding:-) Myself, Rebecca & Christine are working really hard to lock down a venue for Thriveabetes 2016. We hope to announce the venue along with a date before the end of the year. 

When people filled out our "How did we do?" survey after Thriveabetes we had lots of offers of help, which was great! So we are hoping that people can now volunteer what area of the conference they would like to get involved with. At the moment, we have three volunteer roles that we would really appreciate some help with. But we know in the future we will have more roles to fill and if you have a talent, interest or hobby that you think we could use, we WANT to hear from you!

Here are the roles we know we need now;

Exhibition: We are also hoping to expand our exhibition so that we might include a bigger variety of products. If anyone has any experience in organising exhibitions or trade shows and would like to offer their assistance, we would be very appreciative.

Children & Teens programmes: We were very much aware that facilitating our children would have made the conference more accessible for more people. So our number 1 priority will be developing programmes for all the different age groups of children and teens with diabetes and their siblings and how to make this work.

Blogging:  I feel that it is really important to maintain the spark of connecting people with diabetes found at Thriveabetes and, in my opinion, one of the ways that will help to maintain some of this spark is our blog.

I am looking for blog post ideas or submissions for stories. If you have a story you want to share, if your child with type 1 diabetes wants to share, we'd love to hear it! Send your submissions to me at Grainne@thriveabetes.ie.

The only restriction that we will impose is that it is related to living with diabetes.

P.S. Don't forget you can connect with any of the Diabetes Support groups, virtual and real, to stay connected.