Diabetes patients facing lack of NHS diabetes specialist nurses

The number of diabetes cases is outgrowing the number of Diabetes Specialist Nurses being recruited to treat them and the trend looks set to get worse in the near future. A position statement was launched at Diabetes UK’s Annual Professional Conference last week which makes a strong business case for increasing the number of Diabetes Specialist Nurses (DSNs) across the country. The business case has been put together by Diabetes UK, the Royal College of Nursing and TREND UK (diabetes nursing working group). While levels of DSNs are in general increasing, the rate of recruitment is outweighed by the increase in diabetes