Blood glucose meters in the community: Are the results accurate?

independent multidisciplinary group of diabetes health professionals, made available to healthcare professionals a series of leaflets on monitoring blood glucose aimed for use by the person with diabetes. Both of these approaches were positive steps towards achieving clarity of a seemingly difficult situation. Owens et al (2004) and the DMF (Cavan and Hawthorn, 2004) comprehensively covered the need and absolute requirements for home blood glucose monitoring, covering all treatment types and situations in a way that is easily applied to clinical practice. However, the leaflets produced by the DMF embraced the situation with a more practical aspect because they focused on patient need, offering people with diabetes specific advice in accordance with their treatment type. The leaflets also outlined the responsibilities of the healthcare professional in providing SMBG education. This went some way towards recognising the problems with SMBG that were outlined by the Diabetes UK surveys (Diabetes UK, 2004a; Diabetes UK, 2004b; Diabetes UK, 2004c). P roblems surrounding people with diabetes monitoring their own blood glucose is now attracting major specialist press attention. Relevant issues related to clinical practice, such as inappropriate use, lack of training and education have been reported (Cavan and Hawthorn, 2004; Kerr, 2004; Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, 2004; Reynolds and Strachan, 2004), resulting in controversial prescribing restrictions and suggestions that meter results may be inaccurate (Rosindale et al, 2004). In 2004, Diabetes UK carried out surveys of attitudes and practices of both healthcare professionals and patients (Diabetes UK, 2004a; Diabetes UK, 2004b). The results supported the previously described issues of disparity in the content of education delivered by healthcare professionals and also highlighted accuracy as one of the important qualities that patients wanted from their meters (Diabetes UK, 2004b). In the same year, Owens et al (2004) published guidelines for self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) in type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Also at that time the Diabetes Monitoring Forum (DMF; Blood glucose meters in the community: Are the results accurate?