The impact of nursing staff education on diabetes inpatient glucose management: a pilot cluster randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND: An increasing number of patients in hospital have diabetes, with most of them cared for by non-specialist staff. The effect of diabetes education for staff on patient outcomes, as well as the most effective method of staff education is unclear. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare diabetes outcomes in medical wards where nursing staff were offered one face-to-face (F2F) session followed by access to online education (online), F2F education only, or standard care (control). METHODS: We conducted a pilot cluster randomised controlled trial involving 16-weeks baseline/rollout followed by a 28-week post-intervention period across three medical wards (clusters) in a Sydney Teaching Hospital. The online ward provided an online competency-based diabetes education program and 1-h F2F teaching from a diabetes nurse educator (DNE), the F2F ward provided four separate 1-h teaching sessions by a DNE, with no additional sessions in the control ward. The primary outcome was length of stay (LOS); secondary outcomes included good diabetes days (GDD), hypoglycaemia and medication errors. Poisson and binary logistic regression were used to compare clusters. RESULTS: Staff attendance/completion of ≥ 2 topics was greater with online than F2F education [39/48 (81%) vs 10/33 (30%); p < 0.001]. Among the 827/881 patients, there was no difference in LOS change between online [Median(IQR) 5(2–8) to 4(2–7) days], F2F [7(4–14) to 5(3–13) days] or control wards [5(3–9) to 5(3–7) days]. GDD improved only in the online ward 4.7(2.7–7.0) to 6.0(2.3–7.0) days; p = 0.038. Total patients with hypoglycaemia and appropriately treated hypoglycaemia increased in the online ward. CONCLUSIONS: The inclusion of online education increased diabetes training uptake among nursing staff. GDD and appropriate hypoglycaemia management increased in the online education wards. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Prospectively registered on the Australia New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR) on 24/05/2017: ACTRN12617000762358. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12902-022-00975-y.