As OzDAFNE reaches its first decade we catch up with programme co-ordinator Di Harvey about the programme’s biggest achievements, challenges, and how diabetes health professionals can get involved.

 OzDAFNE turns 10, congratulations! What’s been its biggest achievement?

Our biggest achievement is that we’ve been able to establish OzDAFNE as a national programme and maintain its quality assurance and integrity for 10 years. We’ve also been able to export it internationally and have trained two centres in New Zealand and Singapore. Recently we’ve also been able to make the programme more accessible by giving people the option of attending once a day for five weeks rather than on consecutive days.

What’s been your biggest hurdle?

Our biggest hurdle has undoubtedly been a lack of funding. Having adequate funding would help us to grow OzDAFNE. With more funds we could do more research as well as get more recognition nationally.

We’d also like to have more endocrinology engagement. That’s something we haven’t been able to do as well as the UK – they have a strong DAFNE doctor programme.

What are the biggest barriers to patient involvement?

Numeracy and literacy were barriers but we recently had a numeracy and literacy review and had a complete rewrite of our curriculum and workbook. A lot of the feedback we received from participants was about difficulties with carbohydrate counting. The other issue was that people found it difficult to attend the programme for 5 consecutive days but this issue has also been solved with our 5 consecutive day option.

What will OzDAFNE look like when its 20?

We’d like to have a solid funding process behind us that is nationally recognised. We’d also like more research, to have grown the programme and have satellite lead centres of OzDAFNE in every state. It would also be good to have recognition of DAFNE as a good pre-pump programme.

How can diabetes health professionals get involved?

They can get involved by actually becoming a training centre but they will need management support and have a team that has capability to run OzDAFNE. If they’re wanting to support OzDAFNE graduates within their area they can attend one day workshops where we teach DAFNE principles. They won’t become DAFNE trainers but they will be able to support graduates who have done the DAFNE course and will help them understand the language and processes that we use.

DAFNE stands for Dose Adjustment For Normal Eating and has been adapted from the original course taught in Germany. The main objective of the course is to allow more flexibility for people with type 1 diabetes who are on multiple daily injections. To find out more click here.