I’m a ‘wordy’ person so Michael Rosen’s ‘Word of Mouth’ on
BBC Radio 4 is a favourite. The episode
on 3 February gave me a bit of a jolt.
The topic was NHS Language Use and the
fascinating discussion was around ‘health literacy’. This is defined as ‘a person’s ability to
understand and use information to make decisions about their health’. Given that the impact of low health literacy
is estimated to account for up to 5% of national health spending any
improvements to make the language used by health professionals more easy to
understand would be a major step change in health outcomes. Listening to their examples, I was
transported back 23 years ...
It’s 1997 and we’ve just relocated, started new jobs, bought
a new house. Exciting times. We’ve also registered with a new GP surgery,
very different from the previous one in a different town, in a different
county. For starters, they seem to have
a proactive approach with health MOTs for new patients and the friendly,
likeable GP seems concerned that I haven’t seen a consultant about my thyroid
problem for a very long time. The
test results come back and the GP tells me that as I appear to have ‘abnormal
glucose handling’ an appointment has been made for me to see a consultant. Silly me, I didn’t have a clue and with all
the new stuff going on I didn’t do anything to check what this actually meant.
Imagine my surprise when the opening gambit from the
Consultant was to confirm to me that I did have diabetes. Surprise doesn’t really cover the speechless
cold sweat of panic. To be fair he
thought I knew this was why I’d been sent to him. But he had other patients to see so I was
bundled out and told to go away and come back to see the DSN after lunch. I didn’t even know what one of those was,
(it’s a Diabetes Specialist Nurse) or where to get lunch, or what I could
eat. The DSN mopped up my tears,
explained Type 2 Diabetes to me, the tablets I would now be taking and showed
me where to get further information.
So began my adventures in Glycemia.
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