Creating sustained and positive changes to patient safety: reducing insulin administration errors in a district nursing service

The treatment of diabetes within the community has undergone radical change over recent years with the launch of new therapies, including new insulins, bio-similar insulins and incretin mimetics (Smyth, 2020). At the same time, organisations have made changes to workforces through skills mixing and reorganisation of services, resulting in a need to delegate the administration of insulin, safely, to a wide range of different staff working at varying grades, including assistant practitioners, nurse associates, health care support workers and, additionally, care home staff. To support these changes, a range of resources have been made available nationally, including e-study modules, such as ‘Insulin safety e-learning’ (Trend Diabetes, 2020) and ‘An integrated career and competency framework for adult diabetes nursing’ (Trend Diabetes, 2021), together with ‘Competency framework and workbook: blood glucose monitoring and subcutaneous insulin administration’ (NHS, 2020).