The Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital took part in this year’s Hypo Awareness week to raise awareness of the causes, symptoms and management of hypos in hospital.

Awareness of the condition was run across the entire week, reaching all wards using several ways to engage and educate. These included:

• Bite-size 10 minute teaching on the wards using ‘Hypo Snap’ – a game developed by Sarah Gregory (In-Patient DSN) using graphics from the DiabetesUK support tools
• Walking all the wards with the Hypo Awareness t-shirts and asking staff about hypos.
• A Hypo Quiz was developed to highlight the risks of hypos to inpatients, the medication that can cause hypos and how to choose the right treatments
• A ‘main event’ in their Quality Improvement Hub at QEQM was created which more than 60 staff (nurses, doctors, Consultants and students) attended on a drop-in basis to play Snap again, as well as a ‘Hypo Snakes and Ladders’ – a game developed again by Sarah Gregory.
• Junior doctor teaching on the Friday focused on hypoglycaemia – going over the quiz, playing the games and choosing from a selection of ‘treatments’ – some appropriate and some were not.

Their IT and communications team  also supported the week across the whole Trust (which includes Kent and Canterbury and William Harvey Hospital) by putting the Hypo Awareness wallpaper onto all computers and sharing the highlights of the week in the Trust News and via Twitter.

Lots of photos and updates were also posted onto social media in a bid to highlight hypos, education, engage and to start conversations. They also had a ‘Hypo Heroes’ award – which was presented to the ward who engaged the most during the course of the week.