Blood Sugar Testing
Blood sugar testing provides useful information for diabetes management. It can help you:
- Monitor the effect of diabetes medications on blood sugar levels
- Identify blood sugar levels that are high or low
- Track your progress in reaching your overall treatment goals
- Learn how diet and exercise affect blood sugar levels
- Understand how other factors, such as illness or stress, affect blood sugar levels
How to take blood sugar levels:
- Wash and dry your hands well (food and other substances can give you an inaccurate reading).
- Insert a test strip into your meter.
- Prick the side of your fingertip with the needle (lancet) provided with your test kit.
- Touch and hold the edge of the test strip to the drop of blood.
- The meter will display your blood sugar level on a screen after a few seconds.
Monitor your blood sugar levels
If you have been asked to monitor your blood sugar levels, please download our Diabetes Tracking Form to record your glucose readings. Once downloaded, print and complete it over the course of 7 days. Then use the form below to submt your readings to the clinic.
Diabetes care at the Clapham Family Practice are delivered by the team consisting of our health care assistants, our nurses and GP’s and our colleagues in the community and hospital settings.
We routinely call in our Type 2 diabetics on an annual basis but also for check-ups during the year if we have made changes to your medications including blood pressure and cholesterol.
Sometimes you may be asked to go to the hospital for the blood test.
There will then be a follow up call from one of our GP’s a week later to go through you results and check on medication and make a plan for the next few months.
It is important to bring a urine sample with you on the day of your appointment, bottle can be obtained from reception in advance.
DESMOND – To book on to a evidence-based structured education programme designed to give you the knowledge and skills to enable you to self-manage your diabetes for the long-term please click here
We expect our Type 1 patients to be under a specialist team at the hospital and can refer you to a local hospital for this if you are moving into the area or have dropped out of the system.
We are very happy to arrange your check up for you if you would like – please phone reception to arrange a call with a doctor.
There are a range of courses available through the hospital service to help you manage your condition but also resources on the diabetes.uk website.
We are identifying an increasing number of patients whose blood sugars are no longer in the normal range but are not yet at the level to be diagnosed with diabetes. It is important to follow lifestyle advice and be checked annually to see what progress has been made.
We recommend the Diabetes Prevention Plan which we can refer you to help reduce the progression to Type 2 Diabetes