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How bold are we? How much do system leaders actually mean when they talk about having clinically-led systems? It's like a moment in time when the sheer rhetoric of all that chit-chat starts to grate so much that most folks lose interest. More to the point, how much do politicians, or for that matter, even managers trust clinicians to deliver what's needed? The intriguing answer to that, after all my years of management at different levels? Absolutely no idea.

Clinically-led organisations do better, so goes the saying, yet how many organisations are actually clinically-led is a matter of dispute. But on the flip side, there is no better time than now to perhaps road test it. How much are managers actually ready to cease control or do they genuinely see themselves as part of a team with their job to deliver the clinical priorities as outlined by clinical teams?

I am keen to test the theory, so over the course of time will share the experience. The problem is the more clinicians feel rebuffed when their plans or suggestions are rejected or ignored, the more you disengage them. So how do you square that circle?

How do you get the prodigals to return? Even with my role in NHS England, I am bemused by how many non-clinicians I sometimes have to spend time explaining why Type 1 diabetes needs focussing on. The evidence is there, the need is there... yet somewhere the trust isn't in a clinician.

Let's take diabetes. Many separate pots of money. Let's make it simple. How about we forget all the nonsense of widget-based systems for a long term condition. Add in all the present expenses in acute and community providers, whether it be outpatient based activity on a payment-by-result for an acute trust or block contract to as community provider, and look at a 10 year contract to deliver for the region some basic priorities?

Let's say you give that system 10 years to improve amputation rates, improve safety, improve education, improve pregnancy outcomes... well tested principles which has a benefit for patients and an economic return for investment.

Stop micromanaging, give the clinicians the onus and responsibility and the task to live within that budget. Doable? Give them the onus to improve those simple markers, not blue print every single detail as to how to do it.

Get it done, learn from others... your area, your money. 

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We have re-launched our jobs page for healthcare professionals working in diabetes.

To visit the page, click here.

A medical alert warning users about the battery life of a specific insulin pump has been issued.

The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency has released information for healthcare professionals so they can tell their patients about the updated advice.

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Sarah Bone is the chief executive of the Diabetes Research & Wellness Foundation charity. Since its inception in 1991, the organisation has committed more than £11 million to diabetes research and works with partner agencies all over the world.

Here, Sarah tells The Diabetes Times what the future holds for the charity and what its main objectives are for the next few years.

To read the interview, click here. 

Referrals and take-up rates for the first wave of the NHS Healthier You: Diabetes Prevention Programme are being exceeded, according to Public Health England.

The monthly e-bulletin also provided details on the mobilisation sessions which are now underway with Year 2 sites, prior to commencement of service delivery early in 2017/18, dependent on local circumstances and planning.

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A sports scientist doctor and advocate of a low-carb high-fat diet (LCHF) has been found not guilty of professional misconduct for the advice he gave to a breastfeeding mother about food.

Professor Tim Noakes, who promotes the Banting Diet, advised the woman to wean her baby onto the LCHF diet via the social media forum Twitter.

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The role of diabetes specialist nurses was trumpeted by England’s chief nurse at a special conference staged to empower people with type 1 diabetes.

The second annual Talking About Diabetes (TAD) conference took place on Saturday, April 22, 2017 at Birkbeck College, London.

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A few months ago I wrote about the importance of being selfish when you need to be, not in the way that may cause upset or hurt to myself or others, but more of a self-soothing, self-management sort of way.

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The future of diabetes care in hospitals was top of the agenda at the latest All-party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Diabetes meeting.

According to the APPG, one in six hospital beds is taken up by someone who has diabetes, but the organisation wants to lower numbers.

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