As I have stated in previous reports, for legal and regulatory reasons, it is not possible for a person with diabetes to attend a healthcare professional conference, unless they are indeed a healthcare professional themselves. In past years, the goings on of the Diabetes UK Professional Conference has been reported out via Twitter and various blog posts, as a number of us bloggers have been invited to attend. Whilst this is a good way of getting the headline information out to the people living with the condition being discussed, it does not get the detail of the sessions out to the wider audience.

So this year, in response to feedback from those of us with diabetes, DUK took the unprecedented step of extending the conference by an entire day to bring us the first ever Diabetes UK Professional Conference Insider event. Designed especially for people living with diabetes and their families, it brought us selected topics from the healthcare professional conference delivered in a day of plenary and parallel sessions to an audience of over 250.

There was a real buzz in the air as delegates lined up for registration and went through into the conference area. Seeing old friends and meeting new ones. It’s a feeling that is hard to describe. People that spend every single second of every single day with their condition. No breaks. No holidays. Family and friends are of course supportive, but (with no disrespect to any of them) they don’t fully understand how it feels, and to be honest, we hope that they never have to. Suddenly these people are with others in the same boat, people that “get it”. They are in the majority rather than being the exception. This is peer support at its best. If nothing else had happened that day and everyone had just stood around chatting to each other, then the majority would have left feeling motivated and empowered. However, there was a full day programme still to come……

Following on from the opening words from Chris Askew, DUK CEO, was the Banting Memorial Lecture - Diagnosis matters by Professor Andrew Hattersley. An incorrect diagnosis of any kind is an issue, but when it comes to diabetes it can mean that the PWD can be put on the wrong treatment plan from day one, and could possibly stay on it for the whole of their life. Prof Hattersley went through the main types of diabetes, MODY, Neonatal, Type 1 and Type 2. The first two are due to genetic “spelling mistakes” and rather than be treated by a lifetime of insulin therapy, as they would be if misdiagnosed as Type 1, they can be treated by oral medication instead. Misdiagnosis of Type 1 and Type 2 is common. In fact, our own UK Prime Minister was misdiagnosed as Type 2 at the start of her life with diabetes. The best way to diagnose whether it is Type 1 or Type 2 is a c-peptide test. This shows how much insulin the pancreas is still producing, but it is not routinely used. It used to be an expensive test but now is only £6. I wonder if any of the delegates will be asking their clinic to have this test run now that they have this additional learning from the event? The key message from this session was that Diagnosis Matters. It really matters and it need to be right. The advice to all healthcare professionals from Prof Hattersley if the treatment plan for a PWD isn’t working as it should. Check the diagnosis. His words “if you can’t be right, be humble”.

You could have heard a pin drop during the lecture. I personally learned more about the other types of diabetes discussed than I ever would have from reading any medical publication. It was pitched perfectly for the audience.

A short coffee break which saw the buzz of the pre-conference discussions increase in volume was followed by the parallel sessions. Of course I was unable to attend all of these as they were split out into different rooms, so if you’d like to see the programme with a summary of the session content, then you can find it here.

After lunch, and some great discussions amongst the delegates about the mornings sessions, everyone came together for the afternoon plenary sessions.

First up was a great friend of mine, Bob Swindell on the subject of diabetes stigma and the use of language. I wrote about the importance of “Language Matters” in my previous post, and Bob expanded on the work that is going on in the UK to develop a diabetes language statement, with which he is closely involved. He also discussed his experience of diabetes stigma as a person living with Type2 diabetes, giving examples of the stigma propagated by the media and the assumptions that people make about diabetes and weight. Bob also talked about his passion for Park Run and the work he is doing to encourage other PWDs to exercise as part of their diabetes management.

Next up was Dr Partha Kar, Associate National Director of Diabetes, NHS England and some bloke who calls himself the Grumpy Pumper…….

I was an honour to be asked to speak at this event on the subject of Social Media and Peer Support along with Partha.

Following on from Bob is never easy as he is an eloquent speaker. Speaking before Partha was never going to be easy as he is a professional and an expert in his field.

So in a seamless transition from Bob’s talk to mine, I found that my slides had not been uploaded to the computer. Great start right? So whilst Partha (who had a copy on a memory stick) and the Tech guy bailed me out, I stood grumpily and watched my blood glucose levels raise sharply on my CGM as the adrenalin kicked in……

Tech issues sorted I ran though my slides, only interrupted the once as my mobile phone rang as I’d forgotten to turn it off. Like I said, I’m not a professional speaker, I’m just a bloke with diabetes.

I ran though my life with diabetes and how I came to end up on social media. How it showed me the value of peer support. How it motivates me to carry on managing my condition and to try and do the same for others. For me, peer support is the most important non clinical diabetes management tool I have. However, as stated above, peer support can be face-to-face too and not just on social media. I can be anywhere and you can pick the format that works best for you.

Tweet Chat

Snap Chat

Have a Chat

It’s all peer support……

Partha followed me, reiterating that when using social media, you need to be respectful of others. Just because we have the same condition doesn’t mean we will all agree with each other. That’s ok. Debate is good, but keep it nice. He then went on to discuss how he uses social media to learn from the people with diabetes that he interacts with. He himself does not have diabetes and finds social media to be a great educational tool. He also uses technology to ensure that the PWDs under his care can always get hold of him for advice if they need to be it by email, phone or whatever means works best for them (but not Snapchat!).

The final session of the day was a panel Q&A taking questions from the floor. The panel members were Dr Partha Kar, Dr Denise Robertson, Professor Roy Taylor, Professor Susan Wong, and Dr Kirsty Winkley.

Chair of the session was Alex Ritson. Alex was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of 18. He is now the presenter of the news on BBC World Service Radio and in December 2017 he had a hypo live on air which he describes as “my worst ever day at work”, although he has turned it into a positive for others. I personally heard this happen live and think that it perfectly demonstrates how hypoglycaemia can affect us even doing the things we usually do as a matter of routine. If you want to hear what happened, you can listen to the recording here.

There were a lot of great questions from the delegates ranging from ones about the information we had learned in the sessions, through to availability of technology within the NHS.

Closing words came from Bob, who thanked Diabetes UK for putting on such a great event and the speakers for their time and words.

For me and every other delegate that I spoke to on the day, this was a fantastic, informative and motivation event. I hope that it will become a permanent fixture at the conference.

If you are on Twitter and would like to see the tweets and pictures from the day, then please search for the hashtag #DUKPCInsider.

To say that there are a lot of sessions at the Diabetes UK Professional Conference is probably an understatement. If you add them up, they total around 30 per day for each of the three days of the health care professional part of the conference. Sessions range from Awards and Professional Interests Groups to Named Lectures and Plenary Sessions. The program includes Oral Abstracts, Posters, Workshops and Industry Symposia.

So as you can see, delegates need to choose carefully which sessions they want to attend and then build a schedule that is packed with the most relevant content for their role and interest.

Because the conference covers all types of diabetes, the subjects cover every element of diabetes, from (but not exclusively) diagnosis, diabetes management, risk and complications, nutrition, physiological impact and technology.

Of course, there is no way I could attend all of these sessions nor can I summarise all that I did attend in one blog post, so I will focus on a few that stood out for me.

I attended a great session by Dr Helen Murphy on the trials carried out in Cambridge with closed loops systems (also known as Artificial Pancreas Devices) for women with Type 1 Diabetes during their pregnancies.

All of us with Type 1 Diabetes has the daily challenge of trying to keep our blood glucose levels within, or as close to, the range of someone that has a fully functioning pancreas. This is by no means easy with so many factors and variables involved. So if you then consider a woman with Type 1 Diabetes who is pregnant, it throws in a load more factors. The demands on their bodies whilst they grow this new life are immense, let alone the added complication of managing diabetes. Hormone changes for starters will throw their usual diabetes management routine out of the window. Insulin resistance can massively increase and they may find that they need much, much more insulin on a daily basis than they ever have in the past. All of this can cause blood glucose levels to be even harder to manage and keep in range.

As a starter that is not good for the expectant mother, but importantly it could also impact the baby that is growing inside. This can add additional stress and worry to the mother, who already has enough to deal with.

In the session by Dr Murphy, she explained the trials they have been running and how the closed loop systems they used really helped mothers to keep their blood glucose levels within their target ranges. The systems were really put through their paces too. The mothers were given foods that may usually be avoided due to their effect on blood glucose levels and they also exercised every day.

Throughout all of the trial data and testing of the technology, one important fact came through. The closed loop systems helped mothers with Type 1 Diabetes have as happy and healthy babies as they would have had if they had not used the system, but it took away a lot of the additional effort and worry in managing their diabetes that they would to have done, allowing them to focus on preparing to be new mums.

The other session that stood out was “Language Matters”. This is something I am very passionate about. Language can motivate, or demotivate. This is true for anyone, but for a person living with diabetes its essential to get it right. Why? Because it’s hard enough to keep motivated when managing a condition that you will never (as yet) be cured of. A condition that you never get a day off from. A condition that you even have to take on holiday with you, and one that you even have to pack for when you do….

It’s a wide subject so I will give you an example:

I try not to talk about testing my blood glucose levels. Tests are passed or failed. I can never fail a blood glucose test. It’s just a measure of what my blood glucose level is at that time. So, I check my blood glucose. Similarly, I do not try to control my diabetes. I can’t control it. I doesn’t matter how much I tell it what to do or wish every blood glucose check to be in range, it won’t be. So instead I manage my diabetes. I manage the highs. I manage the lows. I manage to the best of my ability on each individual day.

It’s important for HCPs to use the correct language too. Failure to do so could mean a demotivated PWDs and worse, it can make us feel like we have failed. So language really does matter.

A couple of other highlights from the conference were the results of DIRECT and a keynote session on sleep.

The DiRECT (Diabetes REmission Clinical Trial) study set out to investigate the possibility that Type 2 Diabetes could be sent into remission by putting PWDs on a strict 800 calories per day diet for eight weeks. The results from the study were presented at this session and have been widely publicised, as they indicated that almost half of the PWDs involved achieved remission of their diabetes. However, as with all studies of this kind, the challenge is how to turn the findings into a sustainable treatment plan that will benefit the wider Type2 population.

The keynote session that discussed the impact of lack of sleep on diabetes management was held as the first session of the day before 9am, which I was not alone in finding amusingly ironic. High and low blood glucose levels can disrupt the sleep for anyone living with diabetes. The metabolic changes that lack of sleep can cause often then can have a knock on effect on blood glucose levels and make it even harder to manage them. You can easily see how the circle of events can occur. A PWD has less sleep due to high blood glucose levels. Lack of sleep causes higher insulin resistance which in turn pushes up their levels. And round and round we go…

This year’s conference was extended from three days to four. The fourth day saw a brand new event specifically for people and families of those that are living with diabetes. This will be the focus of my next report.

Guess what?

Yep,

I’m at a Diabetes conference….

One month to the day of the opening of ATTD in Vienna, it’s time for the Diabetes UK Professional Conference, which this year is being held at Excel in London.

As I mentioned in my first post from ATTD, that was a technology conference. This one is a Healthcare Professional (HCP) conference. Lots of medical research findings and data covering all types of diabetes and all aspects of treatment, with a large focus on Type 2. Personally, I think that this is totally the way that it should be. With the UK population of people with diabetes (PWDs) being made up of around 10% Type 1, the majority of the remaining 90% are Type 2, so it’s logical to me for the focus to be on this.

Very recently a study has suggested that diabetes should be considered as five separate conditions and not as two types, like we currently do. I have not seen many sessions on this topic at the conference this year, but it will be interesting to see how this progresses in future years and how it changes the way that PWDs are advised on the most effective ways to manage their diabetes depending on these groupings. Further information can be found here.

The same challenges around PWD attendance at any conference are faced here each year and Diabetes UK have tried for several years to involve a few PWDs in the conference, either as speakers or to cover the conference by tweeting and posting on social media in an attempt to open the conference out to the community. This year, for the first time ever, the conference has been extended by another day to run a specific day for PWDs, so that they can hear a few of the sessions that were presented over the previous three days. Again, my personal view is that this is a great thing. Whether it will work out well, we will have to see after the event based on the feedback it gets, but I applaud Diabetes UK for putting in the time and effort to try something new. It’s not the ideal end game (I’d love to see a PWD at every single session along with the HCP speakers), but if successful, it is something that can be built on. I will write a report focussed on the PWD after the event.

The conference structure is the same as many diabetes conferences, with an exhibition area, industry symposia, named keynote lectures, plenary sessions and workshops.

The sessions vary in subject much more that at ATTD. There are still sessions around use of technology but far more in areas such as:

• Type 2 Prevention
• Cardiovascular disease
• Foot Complications (of which I am currently dealing with personally)
• Retinopathy
• Gestational Diabetes
• Nutrition
• Psychological impact of diabetes
• Language Matters

I will do a more detailed write-up of some of the sessions in my next post.

Hopefully this gives you an idea of what a HCP conference is and how it compares to a technology one. They are the same, but different.