Endocrine Abstracts

Background: At the beginning of the first Covid 19 lockdown the team realized the need for an innovative way of having contact with young people. Virtual sessions could do this? We also needed to meet young person’s wishes.

Objectives: -For the activity to be fun.

-Improve carbohydrate counting, knowledge, expertise and confidence

-Give young people skills to be independent with their carb counting skills

-Focus on those moving from primary school to secondary schools

-Peer support to reduce isolation of lockdown.

-Using technology young people are familiar with as well as ingredients they are likely to have or easily acquire.

Method: Sessions run by Zoom, virtual cooking and carbohydrate counting. The sessions; scones, pizza, mince pies/strawberry stars. Each session is run virtually by a dietician and a diabetes specialist nurse zooming in separately from their kitchens. Bright invite posters, with food examples are e-mailed to all the young people as well as distributed in clinics both face to face and virtual. Those that show interest have a follow up telephone call from a dietician. Use (Plan, Do, Study, Act) to improve the sessions. Aided by ’Survey Monkey’.

Results: 75% enjoyed the session a great deal, 25% a lot. 50% said the session had improved their carb counting a great deal, 25% a lot. 75% said they always carb counted prior to the session 100% very likely, to carb count from now on. Suggestions; ’I think if we could vote for what food we make that would be great for the next session’ ’I loved showing my family the creations’ ’I enjoyed cooking the food and learning how to carb count’

Conclusion: These sessions are a huge success and through the feedback we are able to gear them to young people’s wishes. It is essential when doing non-compulsory education that children’s needs are met or the sessions will not happen. PDSA cycles let us adapt sessions to young person’s needs in this climate of rapidly shifting challenges. Technology allows us to for-fill the objectives. We hope by using Survey Monkey we can gage it to an older age group too