PITstop

PITstop 2023 conference – it’s time to refuel

We would like to thank all the delegates that attended this year’s PITstop, it’s time to refuel 2023 conference held online and face to face in Kent on 13th June 2023.
More than 220 healthcare professionals attended the event in total and 15 sponsored exhibition stands from industry. 100% of delegates who attended face to face and online said they ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘agreed’ that the conference met their expectations.
The top five speaker sessions which were voted most useful to the delegates role were:

Type 3c diabetes
GLP-1 and insulin update
Diabetes and the renal patient
Overview of the latest guidelines
Complex case studies

Other topics covered were Summary of Oral medications update, Premixed or not to premix, Interstitial Glucose Monitor overviews and a panel discussion.
Face to face conference feedback:

‘I thoroughly enjoyed the wealth of knowledge that was shared and found the day to be enlightening.

PITstop Midwifery

PITstop was adapted following a request from Susan Quinn, DSM from Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, who was searching for a practical training course focusing on insulin management and support for women with gestational diabetes and with type 2 diabetes (during preconception and pregnancy). Greenwich University gave permission for the learning outcomes to be adapted and new case studies were developed appropriate to midwifery.

The 2015 NICE NG3 pregnancy guidance and local guidelines, helped the DSMs justify treatment options, including when to start and titrate insulin. The PITstop insulin care pathway and general rules were relevant to women with type 2 diabetes requiring insulin when planning pregnancy.

PITstop launches prescribing guidance

PITstop prescribing guidance is for nurses that do not prescribe (non-prescribers), non-medical prescribers and GPs supporting non-prescribers. The guidance highlights the importance of clearly defining your role in advanced diabetes care and knowing when prescribing colleagues must be involved (non-prescribers), and the importance in defining your scope of prescribing practice with diabetes-related medication (non-medical prescribers). The RCN are not planning to write any guidance on this and plan to provide links to recognised guidance from experts in the field, as it is published. The main PITstop messages are relevant to any primary care clinician, but the focus is for PITstop-trained clinicians to use the PITstop resources, including the insulin and GLP-1 care pathways and the general rules, alongside local and NICE guidelines.

The guidance, in our student folder and available to download from the website, evolved in response to an email last year from Sharon Lee, Primary Care Workforce Facilitator for South Kent Coast clinical commissioning group, which highlighted the issue.