The ward

Patients are admitted for a maximum of five days in the ward that accommodates 12 patients on a 24-hour basis and 4 on a daytime-only basis. Patients are admitted for both planned and acute hospitalisation.

The staff consists of a duty doctor, nurses, a social health worker and a clinical dietician; a chief physician, bioanalysts, a medical secretary and a social counsellor are also attached to the ward. The outpatient ward offers experience and training periods for student nurses.

The most common reasons for hospitalisation:
• recently developed diabetes
• increased acid levels
• start up of night insulin treatment
• foot ulcers
• monitoring and regulation of treatment
• hypos: hypoglycaemia (low blood glucose)

The aim of hospitalisation:
to empower the patient to optimise his/her blood glucose levels and thereby improve his/her life quality by preventing development or progression of major diabetic complications. We try to meet this aim by:
• making a medical review and giving a status of the patient’s complications
• optimising the patient’s self-monitoring of blood glucose
• motivating the patient to set personal diabetes-management goals
• assessing the patient’s knowledge of diabetes and need for diabetes-related education in order to give him/her greater understanding of his/her illness
• teamworking to create a tailored hospitalisation plan for the patient
• offering education both in a group and on a one-to-one basis in order to strengthen the patient’s management of his/her illness