Tara Sprickerhoff
Tribune Staff Writer
People in Williams Lake with adult type 2 diabetes, and their health care providers, are once again being asked to help make services better by participating in a survey.
Jennifer Mitchell, a recently trained Certified Diabetes Educator and a member of the Interior Health Diabetes Collaborative, says the surveys will allow the collaborative to “find out where we need to focus our efforts to improve diabetes resources.”
“We take those comments and use them to try and improve,” she said.
Results from a previous survey have already helped the collaborative.
“We’ve worked on making sure doctors are aware of where they should refer diabetes patients to here in town, and we’re trying to improve who has got diabetes knowledge in town,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell, a pharmacist at Shoppers Drug Mart in Williams Lake, completed her Certified Diabetes Educator training in July and has since been working to help diabetes patients with her improved skills.
“It’s a higher level of education focussing on diabetes,” she said, adding that it has also allowed her to specialize on Canadian recommendations for diabetes in particular.
“The kind of stuff we find ourselves answering is about how to adjust insulin doses if blood sugars are high or low or fluctuating.
“We’ve taken special training to focus in and look at the picture and say we need to do this to get this under control and then we can do this. So that seems to be the main thing that we focus on: looking at those blood sugars and finding a way to basically manage them and stabilize them.”
As a type 1 diabetic herself, Mitchell has seen an increase in referrals from doctors to help people with diabetes since becoming a Certified Diabetes Educator.
However, despite her new training and new initiatives that the Diabetes Collaborative has worked on, Mitchell hopes more people will fill out the survey.
We need to know “whether things are improving with our committee or whether they are worse and areas where we can focus on,” she said.
Surveys take five minutes to fill out and are available in Williams Lake at the Atwood Clinic, Yorston Clinic, Shoppers Drug Mart, and the Diabetes Clinic in Dene House.
The surveys for diabetes health care providers can be food at http://fluidsurveys.com/s/ProviderQuarterly/.
While the surveys are anonymous those who fill them out can leave their name and contact information.
They will be entered into a draw to win a $25 gift certificate to Save-On-Foods or Safeway in Williams Lake.
