Diabetes care for hospital patients in Australia needs repair

Annual audits of practice, national guidelines, specialist diabetes care teams, and increased patient participation are all needed

Diabetes inpatient care is broken and, given the disease burden, it requires urgent attention. The Queensland Impatient Diabetes Survey reported by Donovan and colleagues in this issue of the Journal1 found that care for hospital patients with diabetes is suboptimal. The authors report that rates of medication error and hospital‐acquired diabetic ketoacidosis are high and that peri‐operative planning is inadequate. This is a major problem, as many hospital inpatients have diabetes.