Flexible Diabetes Management

I think it's worth anything, though. I mean, you know, we're talking about diabetes control, but certainly if I think about my area of practice, and that's feet, we've got to tailor our management plans to our patients because I certainly know that being dictatorial and quite autocratic about what I want from a patient is never gonna work depending on the individual circumstances of the patients. We've got to always factor that and reach some sort of compromise about what is going to be manageable for the patient, what's going to be safe for the patient, what is tolerable to them, what they're willing to accept and constantly change and work with that because you're more likely to get people on board if you have the ability to be a bit more open-minded and a bit more flexible around things than to be rigid and you know rather autocratic and say you will do this or not because you invariably end up losing people that way. So I think as healthcare professionals it's one of the things we learn which I don't think we necessarily understand it's our ability to negotiate and reach compromises and you know consider all avenues and then work with what's best for our patients. But as I've said before and I think I can say that because I have the luxury of time in actually getting to know my patients over a period of a few weeks for that time that they're with me in clinic. So if I've seen them once a week and if I have the luxury of seeing them a few times in a row, it gives me that opportunity to actually develop that relationship and that rapport with them. So that makes it much easier to actually try and help to break down some of the barriers and try and see how we can best help them and where we can plug them into the various services that they may need. But if you don't have that luxury and if it's a one-off that you're seeing somewhere, it's very difficult. So, you know, it's always to take in the context of where people are coming from and what it is that our individual experiences are with patient interaction that helps us to maybe fashion the sort of ideas that we have around this and where we can help and where we can't.