Under the leadership of Dr. Annabelle Rodriguez, the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical
Center Diabetes Management Service was established in 2005 in order to improve the
quality of care for persons hospitalized with diabetes mellitus or those found to
have high blood sugars on admission to the hospital.
Diabetes mellitus is a world-wide epidemic, and it is now well-established the
importance of maintaining excellent glycemic control in those persons with diabetes
mellitus. The management of blood sugars during the course of a hospitalization can
be difficult, both for the patient and the health care providers. There exist a
number of impediments to excellent glycemic control, including the number of tests
a patient undergoes that interferes with timely administration of medication and
food, to the number of insulin preparations that are available to prescribing health
care providers.
In an effort to improve blood glucose control in hospitalized patients with
diabetes mellitus, we first conducted a survey to determine the knowledge base of
health care providers (nurses and physicians) in the area of insulin preparations
and administration. Our study was recently published (Derr et al. Diabetes
Spectrum 2007) and the results showed that there existed significant knowledge
deficits regarding insulin preparations and administration.
Based on prior publications showing a clinical benefit of dedicated inpatient
diabetes teams (insert references) and our work demonstrating poor insulin use
and administration knowledge by health care providers, we established our
inpatient diabetes team with the mission to improve care for hospitalized patients
with diabetes mellitus by actively participating in the medical management (insulin
and/or oral diabetes medications) of these patients and to serve as an ongoing
educational resource to all health care providers.
