This category recognises initiatives that have improved the provision of safe care for a person living with diabetes, in any setting. It includes, but is not restricted to, the safe use of insulin.

Winner: Setting up a MDT by Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

One in five patients in hospital may have diabetes as well as the condition they are being treated for. Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust set up a multidisciplinary team (patients, nurses, doctors and pharmacists) to perform a ‘failure-modes-effects’ analysis of critical incident reports and patient stories of errors in managing diabetes in the trust. For each category it produced and implemented a best care bundle; new prescribing and monitoring charts for drug treatment, ‘hypoboxes’ for dealing with hypoglycaemic episodes and guidelines/ward-based education about diabetes. Within four months the incidence of harmful events and hypoglycemic episodes fell, as did prescription and administration errors.

Second place: Safe use of insulin e-learning module by University Hospitals of Leicester

Insulin prescribing errors are common as shown by the six-year UK data that led to an initiative to improve insulin safety, including free access to an e-learning module (NHS Diabetes, National Patient Safety Agency). This e-learning module with in-built evaluation aims to improve the knowledge of all healthcare professionals (HCPs) on the safe use of insulin by completing a specifically designed e-learning module. It was developed by a multi-disciplinary team from three hospitals and the virtual college was project managed by Diabetes UK.