Diabetes support services

A range of services to help you manage diabetes

At Holstep Health, we offer individual sessions, clinics and group education courses to help you manage your diabetes and live well.

• One to one support
• Integrated diabetes clinic
• Living well with diabetes group
• Diabetes education sessions
• Peer support groups

One-to-one support

Education and advice to help you manage your diabetes

Our credentialled Diabetes Nurse Educators work with you, your GP, endocrinologist and other health professionals to help you achieve your diabetes management goals. We can help you if you’ve just been diagnosed, have had diabetes for years, or if type 2 diabetes runs in your family.

Your Diabetes Nurse Educator will help you to better understand your condition and how food, movement, and medication affect your blood glucose levels. They will work with you to identify ways you can improve your overall health including how to build healthier lifestyle habits around food and exercise.

At your first visit, we’ll ask about your health and social history and what is most important to you. We’ll work with you to create an individualised and realistic plan to support your health and wellbeing. The Diabetes Nurse Educator can also support you with referrals and engagement with other diabetes health care professionals including a dietitian, podiatrist and exercise physiologist.

Our Diabetes Nurse Educator can help you:

• learn how to monitor and manage your blood glucose levels
• prevent or manage the complications of diabetes
• understand diabetes treatment options
• make healthy lifestyle changes to manage your diabetes
• learn how to start and manage injectable medications (including insulin)
• safely adjust your insulin dose/s to achieve your individualised treatment goals
• monitor your blood sugar levels using get support for continuous glucose monitoring (CGM)
• identify ways you can look aftercare for your emotional health and wellbeing
• access the NDSS (National Diabetes Service Scheme).

Integrated Diabetes Clinic

To manage diabetes well, you need to know some key things about the condition – including how it affects your whole body and how nutrition and exercise can help you manage your blood glucose levels.

If you’ve recently been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, our Integrated Diabetes Clinic provides education and support to help you on your diabetes healthcare journey.

You’ll get expert support from:

• a Diabetes Nurse Educator, dietician and an exercise physiologist in one appointment
• a care coordinator, who will help support you on your journey.

Living well with diabetes

Advice and support in friendly small group classes

Our group education program, run over two half-days, helps you better understand and manage diabetes. It’s suitable for anyone with this condition – whether you’ve just been diagnosed or have been living with diabetes for a long time.

Led by qualified health professionals, the program covers topics like food and nutrition, physical activity, blood glucose monitoring, medication, foot care and preventing complications.

The sessions include time for questions and discussion. Your family and caregivers are welcome to take part, too. By the end of the program, you’ll have the knowledge and tools to feel more in control of your health.

Our living well with diabetes program can help you:

• understand how diabetes affects your body
• learn how food, activity and medication affect your blood sugar
• understand the different options for treating diabetes
• get tips for meal planning and reading food labels
• reduce your risk of developing diabetic complications
• feel more confident with blood glucose monitoring.

Diabetes Group Education sessions

Our credentialled Diabetes Educators run several courses across the year, focussing on teaching you new skills to help manage your diabetes.

The courses available across our sites are:

• CGM Group Training –designed to give you a head start learning how to set up your Continuous Glucose Monitoring device, in a supportive group setting with our Diabetes Nurses
• Diabetes Prevention Information Sessions run in the community – a talk run by health professionals on reducing your risk of Type 2 diabetes and steps you can take
• DESMOND “Diabetes Education and Self-Management for Ongoing and Newly-Diagnosed” group sessions run 3 times per year at our West Heidelberg site. Please see website to sign up DESMOND – Diabetes Victoria

Diabetes Peer Support

Our peer support group offers a welcoming space to share your experiences, learn from others and create connections to people living with diabetes.

We also have sessions with allied health and nursing guest speakers from Holstep Health, giving you an opportunity to gain insights to help you on your journey.