Welcome to Diabetes Stories

Professionals

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Interview (random selection)

Born in Florence in 1935.
Occupation: GP
Overview: Irene Bainbridge trained in medicine at Oxford University from 1953 to 1960 and became a full-time mother from 1961 to 1974. When she returned to work, she found much had changed, especially in diabetes care. After further training, she became a GP from 1978 to 2000 in a rural dispensing practice in Essex, twenty miles from the nearest hospital. The practice appointed a Diabetes Specialist Nurse in the late 1980s. At the time of interview, she was still doing sessional work in general practice and was editorial adviser to the journal, ‘Dispensing Doctor`.

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Healthcare Professionals

Here you can listen to 30 healthcare professionals - doctors, nurses, dietitians, podiatrists and one lay educator ï¿½ recalling memories of every aspect of their working lives. They talk about their relationships with patients and colleagues as well as changes in treatment, technology, and the health service. The earliest memory is from 1940 and the most recent from 2008.

The interviewees include some pioneers in diabetes care, but also those who had little specialist knowledge ï¿½ to match the wide range of care described by people with diabetes who had already been recorded for this website.

Some of the people with diabetes describe being treated by pioneers such as R.D. Lawrence, co-founder of the British Diabetic Association, but others were treated by people who were not specialists, including family doctors (GPs) who had rarely encountered diabetes. Our aim was to choose interviewees who would represent the variety of care provided over a period of nearly 70 years.

Those who had already written about their work were asked to provide a selection of up to 12 of their publications. (Click on Publications on their individual page.) However, these interviews are not primarily about scientific developments already well documented, but rather about how these developments affected ï¿½ or did not affect - the daily lives of healthcare professionals and their patients.

(In addition to 25 interviews that are mainly about professional experience, we have included in this section 2 interviews with people with diabetes and 3 with family members who have also been involved in diabetes care.)

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