Nurse dedicated to supporting young people with diabetes receives prestigious national award

Rachael Humphreys is a Paediatric Specialist Diabetes Nurse at the Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospital for Wales and has been awarded the NHS Wales Outstanding Contribution Award for Services to Diabetes in the Quality in Care (QiC) Diabetes Awards.

Rachael graduated as a paediatric nurse in 2010 and has worked tirelessly to improve the lives of children and young adults living with diabetes in Wales.

In 2014, she was seconded onto the EDDY (Early Detection of Type 1 Diabetes in Youth) study, working in the community with schools and GP surgeries to raise awareness of the early signs of Type 1 Diabetes to try and reduce the number of children presenting in Diabetic Ketoacidosis.

Following this, she joined the paediatric diabetes team at Cardiff and Vale UHB as a PDSN in 2016 and is now the lead co-ordinator for school education — organising and leading the SEREN Moving to High School Day for children going into Year 7 and organising and facilitating school staff education throughout the school year.

Rachael is also the lead for Type 1 Diabetes and Eating Disorders (T1DE) within her service, working collaboratively with the Eating Disorders team to support patients experiencing T1DE.

She led two projects exploring the lived experience of T1DE with young adults, working with Breathe Creative on Swimming with the T1DE. which received a Commendation at the QIC Diabetes Awards 2023 and is being presented as an ePoster at this year’s ISPAD Conference, and most recently T1DE Talks, which explores more individual experiences of T1DE. She also organised the first All Wales Professional T1DE Conference in September, kindly sponsored by Diabetes UK Wales.

In 2022, Rachael was seconded as the All Wales Project Lead for Type 1 Diabetes and Eating Disorders, supporting and networking with services and clinical leads across Wales, within both paediatric and adult eating disorder, mental health, and diabetes services.

Speaking of her award, Rachael said: “I was really shocked to receive the award, it was completely unexpected. I didn’t realise Dr Julia Platts was talking about me until she mentioned the school education and eating disorder roles I have within our paediatric service.

"I’ve always strived to support the patients in our service to the best of my ability and enjoy organising and leading on projects and service improvement. This past couple of years I’ve been working really hard to increase awareness of T1DE and promote collaboration and multi-disciplinary team working for those experiencing T1DE.

"I couldn’t have created the work or driven the service forward without the young adults willing to share their experiences with me.”

If her service to diabetes is not enough, Rachael — who has Behçet’s syndrome — is also a Trustee for Behçet’s UK, supporting and advocating for patients across Wales with this rare condition and works with Genetic Alliance UK and Rare Disease UK to raise awareness. She annually presents her lived experience to third year Medical Students during their rare disease week at Cardiff University.

QiC Diabetes recognises, rewards and shares innovative practices demonstrating quality in diabetes management, education and services for people with the condition and/or their families.

More than 100 people attended the ceremony, which took place on the evening of Thursday, October 12, at Sanofi’s UK headquarters in Reading.