As some of you may know, Professor Stephanie Amiel from King’s College Hospital retired at the end of September.  Prof. Amiel was one of the original 3 founding fathers of DAFNE and has contributed so much to DAFNE over the years: training many DAFNE doctors, chairing the DAFNE board for 6 years and leading and participating in continued research into DAFNE and diabetes.  I feel immensely privileged to have worked with her and I, the board and the national team would like to thank her for her commitment to DAFNE and wish her a very long, happy and relaxing retirement.

Prof. Amiel’s retirement has made me reflect on everything the DAFNE programme has achieved since 1999 when we began planning the original research and more recently.  It is just 15 months since we launched the Remote DAFNE course and a year since we launched the remote educator and Doctor programmes.  We have trained over 130 new and 320 existing educators on how to deliver the Remote DAFNE course, we have trained 108 doctors and welcomed 7 new centres to the consortium.

The DAFNE teams across the UK and RoI have delivered more than 332 Remote courses to more than 1,200 adults living with diabetes, we have also seen a few centres restarting face to face courses too.  I continue to be humbled by the determination of teams to continue to offer DAFNE courses despite the continued pressure services are experiencing. 

We launched the Remote Pump DAFNE course last month and we are currently working on the development of a remote to face to face conversion programme, to provide new educators that have been trained in the delivery of Remote DAFNE with the knowledge and skills to deliver the in person DAFNE course formats.

Thanks to all DAFNE teams for your continued support and to our amazing national team!