When you move into an adult or young adult clinic you'll naturally take on more responsibility for your own diabetes management.
But you'll also have new responsibilities like getting to your appointments, being honest with your doctor, looking after yourself and keeping your clinic informed with new information.
Attending your appointments
It’s important that you go to all your appointments. But if you can’t make it or you’re running late make sure you tell the clinic.
If you need to cancel an appointment, they might be able to rearrange and give your appointment to someone else, so try to make sure you give them plenty of notice.
Some clinics have a three strikes rule, which means if you miss three appointments in a row you won’t get another one. This means you’ll have to go back to your GP and get them to refer you to a diabetes clinic again.
Updating your details
Make sure you tell your new diabetes clinic if you change your personal details like your address, phone number or name.
If you don’t, you might not get important information about your appointments and any other developments you need to know about.
Your diabetes education
As you become more independent, it’s really important you make sure you know what how Type 1 diabetes affects your body individually like what hypo treatments work for you best, or what kind of foods affects you the most.
There are different education courses you could go on, like DAFNE.
These education sessions are designed to help you understand how to manage your diabetes with information on how to estimate carbohydrates and how to figure out your correct insulin dose.
These courses are often really useful if you’re beginning to become more independent, so ask your new healthcare team about going.
Planning your appointments
Being honest when you’re struggling can be difficult, but your new clinic staff are there to help you and ultimately make sure you’re okay. Your doctors want to find a way to manage your diabetes as much as you do, so being honest won’t go against you.
It doesn’t matter if this is something to do with your diabetes like you’re having more hypos or if it’s something that’s happening outside your diabetes like moving to university. Big events in your life affect your diabetes management, your healthcare team have probably come across almost most of them, so can help you work out what to do.
You might feel like because your appointments are less often and you’re there for less time that you can’t talk in depth to your healthcare team.
Try to write down everything you want to talk about when you’re at your appointment. When you go tell your team you’d like to speak about everything on your list and get the answers you need. This will help you stay focused and make the most out of every appointment.
Set small and achievable goals
Try setting yourself small achievable goals while your transitioning into adult care.
These can be really small like getting yourself to your appointments or making your own appointments but they’ll help the move into adult care simple, achievable and less stressful.
