Patient Education
Patient-centred care is central to the NSF and is needed to ensure that individual care matches individual needs and nurses will be fundamental in this process. Nationally major progress has been achieved in involving users and encouraging partnership working.
Health Minister Rosie Winterton at Diabetes UK’s annual parliamentary reception (2005) announced plans to put patient education programmes at the heart of diabetes services. A joint report by Department of Health and Diabetes UK provides guidance to give people with diabetes the knowledge they need to manage their condition effectively.
NICE guidance on patient education is to be reinstated and PCT’s have needed to implement NICE recommendations by providing all people with diabetes high-quality, structured education from January 2006.
In the forward to the Department of Health, Structured Patient Education in Diabetes, Report from the Patient Education Working Group (2005), Rosie Winterton states “One of the explicit aims of the Diabetes NSF is to ‘make best practice the norm’ and reduce variance between services. Apart from the clinical improvements that this requires, there is also a need to ensure that all patient education is based on sound education principles and is quality assured”.
