Tag Archive for: Preconception Care

Background: Women with diabetes have more complications during pregnancy. Contraceptive advice to prevent unplanned pregnancy is of utmost importance for them. Maintenance of strict glycaemic control is essential to have a positive outcome in pregnancy and proper care. Preconception care and counselling to help pregnancy planning is thus essential.

Aim: To assess whether proper education regarding importance of contraceptive use, preconception care and advice is being imparted to female diabetics according to NICE guidelines

Method: This is a proposed monocentric retrospective clinical audit to evaluate adherence of a diabetes clinic to NICE guidelines regarding education and advice on contraceptive use and preconception care. The three criteria being assessed include documentation of patient’s intentions regarding contraceptive use and pregnancy at each visit with the diabetes care team; offering patients intending to get pregnant a structured education programme as soon as possible; and preconception care and advice being imparted to patients wanting to try for pregnancy before discontinuing contraception. Two patient cohorts, each consisting of 50 patients who meet the inclusion and exclusion parameters for the respective criteria will be made. Data collection will be done by the diabetologist, the diabetes specialist nurse and the practice nurse at St. June’s Diabetes Clinic. Data will be collected by accessing previous records of patients from 01 January 2021 to 31 December 2021. Data will be compiled as a percentage and compared with the standard.

Conclusion: Improved patient-staff communication is the key point to improve compliance with NICE guidelines regarding these standards.