History of the Group

Warwick Diabetes Care is a department of the Warwick Medical School that has developed a national and international reputation for providing diabetes education to healthcare professionals in day-to-day contact with people living with diabetes. It was launched in November 2000 but had been holding accredited courses in diabetes since 1997.

Since 2000, Warwick Diabetes Care has trained over 5000 GPs, nurses, dietitians etc and consequently improved the diabetes care of many more thousands of people living with diabetes across the UK.  The Warwick Diabetes Care research programme commenced in November 2000 and is in line with department of health policy. A method was needed to involve people living with diabetes in the research process.

The launch meeting of the Warwick Diabetes Care took place on 4th July 2001 at the University of Warwick. The launch event was advertised through local Diabetes UK groups, local radio and papers and 30 people withdiabetes and their carers attended along with 10 members of the administrative, teaching and research team from Warwick Diabetes Care.  Participants expressed their views of the most important diabetes research questions through a “post it” note exercise.

Later in the event, small workgroups organised the post-it notes into themes, and so the Warwick Diabetes Care research strategy began to emerge.  A further exercise in the construction of questionnaires followed and a third group looked critically at a patient information sheet for a research study and suggested how to improve it.

Feedback was collected to determine whether a User Group could be formed and in 2002 the User Group was established. This group has now become the Warwick Diabetes Research & Education User Group.  One of it’s first major tasks was to become involved in developing a patient education programme called the Diabetes Manual.

The group provides advice upon all types of issues that the research or education team could raise. This could be about how a research project is designed e.g. how best to recruit patients or how to write questions for a survey.  For detailed help go to the staff & researcher information page. As WMS expanded the groups title was altered to include “Education” as this is another area now covered by the group.

To see how researchers at Warwick Medical School are working with members of the User Group to guide research activity, please view the film.