Health Behaviors and Patient Care During Hot Weather

Question 3, which one of the 8 behaviours or 13 characteristics do you think are relevant at this time of year to you and your patients? So I certainly think one of the important things would be maintaining a healthy diet or as healthy a diet as the patient is able to do. Certainly getting sufficient sleep would be an important factor. We know that most patients and certainly most people complain, particularly in the UK, about the inability to sleep when the weather is really, really hot and humid. And I think a lack of sleep not only affects mood, but certainly affects healthcare or your physical well-being because you're not able to rest sufficiently, you're not able to metabolize properly, your body's not able to heal properly. So that certainly puts people in a little bit of a less happier frame of mind because of the lack of sleep. So as and when necessary, I encourage patients to take an afternoon siesta during the most hot parts of the day to help them to get that sleep that they probably need because when the body's rested, the mind is rested, patients are certainly less stressed about things and they are able to cope with things better. And I think it's certainly safer in many instances because a disturbed sleep pattern certainly has quite an impact on patients' health. I think the other thing from the 12 characteristics is knowing when to seek help from your health care professional. So if patients are struggling, I think that it's important that they do engage with health care, whether it's via their GP, phoning 111, or speaking to their diabetes specialist nurses, certainly when they come to the podiatry clinic or to the foot clinic, engaging with the teams there to let the healthcare professional know that they are struggling and if there are anything available for them to actually access.