Grace Vanterpool is a nurse consultant in diabetes. In 2006, she became Nurse of the Year and received an MBE for her work raising awareness of diabetes.
Grace is the only African Caribbean nurse consultant in diabetes in the UK. “It’s amazing really, because diabetes affects all people but particularly African Caribbean and Asian people,” she says.
It’s estimated that 2.35 million people in the UK have diabetes, a condition that affects the body’s response to sugar. It can result in serious health consequences, such as heart disease, stroke, eye and kidney problems and damage to the nerves of feet which may lead to foot ulcers. With proper care, however, people with diabetes can live healthy, active lives.
Helping people live with diabetes
Grace works closely with patients, GPs and practice nurses, as well as training students and clinicians to provide high-quality care. She also works to ensure that all local services for people with diabetes provide the same standards of care.
She and her colleagues at Hammersmith and Fulham PCT and Imperial Health Care Trust support around 5,000 patients and their families. “We do telephone consultations, visit homes and link with dietitians, podiatrists (feet specialists) and retinal (eye) screening.
“Seeing patients feel better is amazing. I help them learn how to measure blood sugar levels, inject insulin and eat well. They begin to see their blood sugar levels improving."
Raising awareness in the community
Making sure people know about diabetes, and improving the lives of people who have it, are the driving forces in Grace’s work. She has been involved in innovative ways of raising awareness, including taking to the streets when she worked in Slough between 2001 and 2004.
Grace Vanterpool talks about her work with people who have diabetes.
“We had a double decker bus that went around town, testing people for diabetes and giving out information,” she remembers. “During evenings and weekends, we’d go wherever people gathered, such as train stations or the university. We also went to local factories, mosques and churches. We discovered that a lot of people had diabetes but didn’t know it.”
It’s thought that around half-a-million people in the UK are not aware they have diabetes.
Grace and her colleagues also attended the local Asian Mela festival to encourage people to get tested. “We were inundated with people. That first year we had one table, and it was so successful that by the fourth year we had a marquee.”
She continued raising awareness among black and minority ethnic (BME) communities under an award-winning project called Action Diabetes. As a result, in 2006, she won Community Nurse of the Year and overall Nurse of the Year at the Nursing Standard awards.
In November 2006, she went to Buckingham Palace to accept her MBE award. “Prince Charles seemed to know quite a lot about diabetes, and asked about reducing risk,” she says. “I said you have to eat healthily and exercise.”
From Slough to the Caribbean and back
Grace always wanted to work in the NHS. She was born in Slough, Berkshire, in 1958, and her parents relocated to their home in Anguilla in the Caribbean when she was six. “It was lovely, unspoilt and hot, but there was no university then. After doing my O-levels I knew I wanted to train in the UK,” she says.
At 17, Grace moved to Slough to train as a nurse. She began her career as a state enrolled nurse (SEN), rather than a state registered nurse (SRN). An SRN can progress to a more senior level, something Grace didn’t realise at the time.
“I just applied to do nursing, and was put on the SEN course,” she says. “I felt disappointed when I realised I couldn’t become very senior, and I think this is something that happened to many BME nurses at the time. But I didn’t let it deter me.” In 1989, Grace interrupted her diabetes work to take a year-long conversion course to become a state registered nurse. She passed with distinction.
Back in 1978, Grace’s first job was on a surgical ward before she took a break to marry and have her daughter, who's now in her 20s. Grace has specialised in diabetes nursing ever since joining Hammersmith Hospital in 1985. "I was working in outpatients when a consultant approached me to work with her in the diabetes department. It started from there," says Grace.
"The important message is not to ignore diabetes, as it's a progressive condition. It's the biggest cause of blindness in the UK's working population, but this and other complications are preventable if diabetes is managed well and monitored."
