Diabetes Ireland held its annual Spring meeting in Sligo this April with an attendance of over 130 people. We had excellent feedback from all attendees on the day and below is a sample of what our community experienced at the meetings. The meeting was divided into 3 streams allowing type 1, type 2 and parents with their teenagers to get maximum benefit from the sessions.

Attendees told us in written feedback that meeting their peers was both supportive and inspirational and that there is always new learning, regardless of how many meetings they have attended  Comments included

‘ I found it reassuring…… not the only one with T1 ……people are managing well after years living with this diagnosis……..  I needed to refocus on my diabetes and I feel rebooted…….. It has shaken up my mind and helps me to manage my diabetes (I am 20 years with diabetes)’.

Mindfulness emerged as a very useful tool in the Parents session, one mother commenting ‘to be more mindful, be good to myself, not so critical’ with another commenting that a speaker was ‘reminding (not nagging) me about parenting collaboratively’. Diabetes Ireland started a counselling service as part of our Care Centre in Dublin this year. If there is good uptake from our community, we will look to extend this service.

Good foot care emerged as an important takeaway message in the type 2 sessions along with portion sizes and food monitoring. ‘The information delivered was ‘clear’, ‘practical’ with ‘excellent Q&A’ and many requests to allow more time for Q&A which we will listen to and address. Our Podiatrists in Dublin report that business is brisk as result of clients telling their friends about the good service they received.

We would like to thank our speakers, who were rated very highly on written feedback.

Finally, thank you for attending. If you did not attend, check out our events calendar to see upcoming events in your area. Many attendees commented that they ‘want to talk more about diabetes with others who understand and live with the condition’.

Running these events cost money and we like to get value for the money spent by getting as many of our community to attend as possible.

We look forward to seeing you at our next event.