Keeping on top of being FIT

As you are all aware, we have increasing numbers of people with diabetes and, consequently, we have increasing numbers of people using injectable therapies to manage their blood glucose levels effectively. We have learnt over the past few years that correct injection technique is crucial to ensure that the injectable therapy achieves the optimum benefit for the individual using it.

The Forum for Injection Technique UK (FIT UK) is about to launch the 4th edition of its UK Injection Technique Recommendations. These recommendations are a result of a pan-global meeting on injection technique held in October 2015, where just over 150 specialists from 58 different countries attended, with a further 4000 people from China, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Latin America joining in on 32 live-stream symposia. The main item on the agenda was the sharing of results from a global injection technique study involving over 13 000 people with diabetes (Frid et al, 2016), which has informed the development of the new recommendations. The global recommendations were anglicised by a group of nurses working in diabetes care from across the UK and then sense-checked by a wider consensus group of nurses.

The updated recommendations will be launched on 16 November and will contain the latest information on injection technique, lipohypertrophy, the psychological challenges of injecting and safety.

The recommendations will contain new research evidence showing that improving injection technique can not only stabilise glucose variation but also reduce total daily insulin requirements and lower the risk of hospital admission due to severe hypoglycaemia. With a cash-strapped NHS, we need to be using all the evidence available to us as nurses to inform better practice, especially as the research has shown that using the correct injection technique can reduce costs both for the NHS and for people with diabetes. The new edition of the recommendations will be available to download at www.fit4diabetes.com.

We owe it to our patients to ensure we keep up to date in all aspects of diabetes care. When this involves injectable therapies, we need to ensure we are teaching people the most up-to-date injection technique, using the shortest needles available, to ensure that they achieve the best possible health outcomes.