Supporting Indigenous communities to overcome diabetes

Four years ago, registered nurse Trina Scott landed her dream job.

“I work for the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health. We’re an Aboriginal community-controlled health organisation on the north side of Brisbane. I’m employed as a clinic nurse,” she says.

A Bundjalung woman, Trina is passionate about delivering health care for Indigenous families and communities. But over the past four years, she’s noticed an unsettling pattern beginning to emerge: increasingly, patients are presenting with risk factors for, and symptoms of, diabetes.

This chronic disease, in which the body struggles to control its blood glucose levels, affects nearly 2 million Australians, sometimes with devastating results. People with diabetes are at increased risk of blindness, kidney failure, limb amputations and cardiac events – and Indigenous people are at elevated risk.

So, when Trina started seeing younger patients being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, she realised she needed to act.

“I’m seeing diabetes diagnoses earlier and earlier,” Trina says.

“Then seeing teenagers being diagnosed with type 2, that was a little lightbulb moment for me. I thought, I’ve been thinking about what to do next – this is it.”

Then seeing teenagers being diagnosed with type 2, that was a little lightbulb moment for me. I thought, I’ve been thinking about what to do next – this is it.

Trina Scott
Graduate Certificate in Diabetes Education and Management

Changing patient lives through diabetes education and management

“It” was the UTS Graduate Certificate in Diabetes Education and Management, a specialist degree that prepares health professionals to better care for patients with, or at risk of, diabetes. As a part-time, online course (with the exception of a 40-hour clinical placement), it’s been designed to help students juggle the demands of study, life and work.

Trina started her studies in early 2021. From day one, she found herself immersed in the study of diabetes from every conceivable angle: clinical practice, clinical management, primary health care and health education. Not only is she learning to help people manage their health via lifestyle changes and medication, she’s also exploring the underlying risk factors that bring people to a diagnosis in the first place.

Trina was also gratified to receive the $12,000 Infomedix ADEA Research Indigenous Scholarship, a UTS-specific scholarship for Indigenous students enrolled in the graduate certificate. That support has enabled her to really dig deep into her learning, applying all her focus to building specialist expertise rather than worrying about her finances.

“I wanted to have that deeper knowledge and understanding of diabetes as a chronic health condition,” she says.

“When you study nursing you do little bits of lots of different things, so being able to specialise in one area, and an area that I’m consistently seeing as an issue, that was the number one thing.”

From classroom to clinic

Currently halfway through her studies, Trina can already see the relevance of what she’s learning in the context of her job. When patients come to see her complaining about middle-aged spread and weight gain, or if they’re showing signs of insulin resistance, she knows it’s time for further investigation.

“It’s about going through those algorithms of, ‘If this is the case, then we do this in six months or we do this in 12 months. So I feel like I’m just onto it that little bit more for my patients,” she says.

Completing her studies will prepare Trina to take the logical next step in her career: from here, she says, she’d love to continue on at the Institute as a specialist diabetes educator, delivering the same passion and care she’s known for but with enhanced clinical expertise.

“I already have those therapeutic relationships established with our families in the community, so they know and trust me already. Being able to keep going on that journey with them is what I really want to do,” she says.

Learn more about Diabetes at UTS.