Diabetes inpatient care varies considerably across hospitals, regions and nations, and people with diabetes often express concern about the management of their condition in hospital. The Diabetes Care Accreditation programme (DCAP) was established to provide assurance that national standards for diabetes care in hospital were being met equally across hospitals in the United Kingdom. We are now halfway through the DCAP pilot and have developed a progress report which showcases our learning so far.

Some of our key findings include:

• Non-diabetes team interviews should be included to test the experience of ward staff, ensuring that processes are understood, and work as expected

• The list of patient interviews should be increased to ensure all types of diabetes and a variety of experiences across the hospital are considered

• Consultant input should be clarified (eg hours per week) in delivering inpatient specific diabetes care and developing the service

• Standard audit and governance questions need to be included within each standard. As well as providing evidence that guidelines are in place, teams need to evidence that they are being followed.

Each hospital has provided us with valuable learnings, which has enabled us to make improvements to the accreditation process. The sites have also helped us to improve and develop more structured advice for our assessors on how to review the evidence prior to an assessment and how to facilitate the interview process.

The full DCAP launch will take place on 31 May 2023, to find out more contact us @askdcap@rcp.ac.uk 

You can read the full pilot report here.