On the eve of World Diabetes Day 2025, GIRFT has issued a guidance poster helping to ensure adult patients living with diabetes who present at the hospital front door receive efficient and safe care.
The poster – designed to be downloaded and displayed – pulls together all of GIRFT’s front door adult diabetes pathways* in one easily accessible place, offering emergency department and acute medical unit (AMU) colleagues a series of QR codes to scan for quick access to pathways and advice.
The guidance features advice for all diabetes referrals, diabetes emergencies such as hyperglycaemia, hypoglycaemia and acute foot problems caused by diabetes, and for patients with diabetes who need emergency surgery.
It also includes suggested criteria for when to refer patients for admission to the AMU, Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) or similar equivalents.
Queen Elizabeth Hospital, part of the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, carried out a pilot initiative using GIRFT’s front door hyperglycaemia pathway.
“We have successfully implemented the GIRFT hyperglycaemia pathway at our medical front door SDEC unit, and it has been really impactful. The early feedback we’ve had from the AMU has been very positive - they have found it incredibly helpful, describing it as ‘empowering' for the resident doctors, and we no longer have to keep patients in overnight or over the weekend to start insulin oral treatment. Once we have audited the pilot, we are planning to roll it out to the emergency department too - in fact, a lot of specialties want something similar.”
*The guidance includes links to GIRFT’s pathways for:
Plus, GIRFT’s decision support tools for deciding whether to admit, observe or discharge, and for discharge of patients newly diagnosed with diabetes and with a pre-existing diagnosis.
