A GIRFT-led initiative which is helping to improve the care of patients with diabetes before, during and after surgery has won an international excellence award.
Improving the Perioperative Pathway of People with Diabetes (IP3D) is named as the top global winner in the 2022 UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence Awards.
Project leaders Professor Gerry Rayman MBE, GIRFT joint clinical lead for diabetes, and Emma Page, GIRFT workstream delivery manager, will attend a glittering award ceremony in Chicago, USA, later this month to pick up the accolade.
Professor Rayman said: “We are extremely proud to win this award in recognition of the team’s hard work, but we’re especially proud to know that patients with diabetes in the trusts which have adopted IP3D are seeing better outcomes and having a better experience when they come in for surgery.”
Watch the video below, made by UNIVANTS to mark the achievement.
The IP3D programme was first established at Ipswich Hospital, part of the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, where it successfully improved the outcomes and experience of people with diabetes undergoing elective care.
In 2019, GIRFT began a project to replicate the Ipswich model and roll out IP3D into 10 pilot trusts to see whether similar improvements could be achieved. Trusts taking part recruited a Perioperative Diabetes Specialist Nurse (PeriopDSN) to offer support and education to staff and people with diabetes undergoing surgery, and adopted a Diabetes Perioperative Passport to be given to patients before surgery to help them prepare for admission.
The pilot initiative was independently evaluated and was found to have led to:
- A 71% reduction in patients with diabetes who experienced diabetes-related harm or complications, such as hyper- and hypoglycaemic events, foot ulcers, diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) and poor wound healing;
- Reduced length of stay (LoS) for elective surgery inpatients with diabetes;
- A better experience for patients, according to post-surgery surveys; and
- Improved staff knowledge, particularly in the area of hyperglycaemia management.
GIRFT has gone on to rollout the programme to further trusts and is holding a webinar later this year to encourage others to get involved.
The session will include a diabetes perioperative specialist nurse talking about her first-hand experience of implementing the IP3D pathway in her trust, and a presentation from an anaesthesia lead for perioperative diabetes on the benefits of IP3D for patients and work around the upcoming emergency surgical pathway.
