Local News
Note from our Chair.
Our Chair, David Murray, recently participated as an Expert Patient in support of the Medical Student Programme at Royal County Hampshire Hospital (Winchester). David was also joined by representatives of the Winchester Diabetes UK Support Branch.
David has been supporting this programme for a number of years and has always enjoyed doing it. It provides a useful experience for the Students to gain a better insight on the impact of Diabetes from a personal perspective. Feedback from the Students is always very positive and a few of their comments are copied below:
- Always good to speak to expert patients and learn about the lifestyle aspect of these diseases. Aids our learning about the social side of medicine
- Expert patient was amazing, very knowledgeable and made the session interactive
- Fantastic expert patient, extremely interesting and a real pleasure to talk to the patient
- This session was very useful and the patient was extremely helpful and knowledgeable.
- Very informative and much better having the patient face to face. Felt I could ask better questions and gain a more complete understanding.
David hopes that these sessions will help persuade the Students to specialise, or at least take an active medical interest in Diabetes.
Coffee & Chat – October 2022
In October we held a Coffee & Chat session in The Cafe at Waitrose which was well attended. Attendees welcomed the chance to have friendly informative discussions with people like themselves who are living with the same types of problems and concerns.
Feedback from the group was that a similar event on a weekend would be good for those people who work and combining it with a short walk was another suggestion. We arranged an event in November and details of how this went are below.
Walk, Coffee & Chat – November 2022
We were very lucky to have wonderful bright weather for our Walk, Talk, Coffee & Chat on Sunday 20th November.
We met at 10:00am outside of Waitrose and following a photo shoot (see below) we walked down to Eastrop Park and did a circuit of the two lakes.
Tilly came well prepared with a bag of food to feed the ducks in one of the lakes.
We also had a wonderful opportunity to watch model boat enthusiasts sailing their magnificent boats around the second lake.
After completing our circuit we returned to Waitrose and made great use of The Café for a well deserved coffee. We were joined by more members of our group and we all spent a happy hour chatting and sharing our experiences of living with diabetes. The general consensus was that we need to repeat this event in the New Year and we hope you will be able to join us. More details of future events can be found below.
CPC Group
Just before the deadline for the publication of this newsletter, we were asked to give a brief presentation on Diabetes and to discuss health matters at the CPC Group. You are probably thinking as we did – who or what is the CPC Group? It stands for Chai Pe Charcha which means “discussions over tea” in Hindi. It is a social group that meets regularly for discussions and activities locally in Basingstoke.
We thought who would want to turn down the offer of tea …... and biscuits in moderation…... so we immediately agreed. We were pleased that we did. It was a great opportunity to meet other people, to discuss various health matters and to spread the message about Diabetes Health Care. All attendees enjoyed the frank and open discussion and everybody learnt that bit more from each other’s perspective.
We would welcome the opportunity to repeat this type of event with other groups.
Future Dates for your diaries
Committee Meeting in January 2023
We will be holding a Face to Face Committee Meeting in January at The Holly Blue pub in Beggarwood. If you are interested you are very welcome to come to have a chat and see whether it is something you would be interested in doing.
Please email us at diabetesuk.basingstokegroup@gmail.com for further details if you would like to join us.
Walk & Talk, Coffee & Chats
Following on from the successful events we held in October and November, we have decided to hold a Zoom session in January, a Face to Face Coffee and Chat in February at The Café in Waitrose and a Walk, Talk, Coffee & Chat in March. It will be great if you could join us and we would love to hear your ideas and views on what you would like the Basingstoke Diabetes UK Support Group to consider for future activities.
Zoom Coffee & Chat –
Monday 9th January 2023 at 11:00am
For the January event you will need to have access to the Zoom app and details of joining the meeting can be found below –
Topic: Basingstoke Diabetes UK Support Group Zoom Meeting
Time: Jan 9, 2023 11:00 AM London
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/71982988965?pwd=z3ea91HAS9J2dn0Ebb9YjOyxEiPdee.1
Meeting ID: 719 8298 8965
Passcode: P3CnsF
Face to Face Coffee & Chat at The Café in Waitrose –
Wednesday 15th February 2023 at 11:00am
Walk & Talk, Coffee & Chat –
Sunday 19th March 2023 at 10:00am
(more details to follow)
