The diabetes team at St. Helens and Knowsley took advantage of their split site environment to promote Hypo Awareness Week across their two different hospitals, St. Helens Hospital the outpatient site and Whiston Hospital, an acute inpatient site.

This approach allowed the team to hit hypo awareness using a ‘two-pronged’ effect – increasing awareness of hypos and lifestyle issues for patients, families and carers at the St. Helens site, while also promoting Trust standards and patient safety issues for their Trust acute inpatient staff at the Whiston site.

At St. Helens Hospital an information board was created, promoting Hypo Awareness Week with the aim of targeting patients with diabetes and their families and carers. This board was in the Diabetes Centre, and had information focusing on the recognition and treatment of hypos, along with heightening awareness of current issues such as the DVLA guidelines and the recent change to glucose content in Lucozade.

At Whiston Hospital a stand was also set up to promote Hypo Awareness Week among staff at the hospital. The stand had a virtual reality ‘hypo simulator’ for staff to wear to allow them to experience how a hypo really feels for a patient, along with information leaflets and laminated credit card sized cards with a traffic light colour coded system outlining the best practice for treating hypos. The aim for this stand was to improve staff understanding, recognition and treatment of hypos for their acutely unwell inpatients.

Their activities have been promoted by the Trust’s Social Media platforms, global email system and photos taken of the stands were circulated in the Trust’s News and Views magazine.