ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the individual and overlapping roles of the different members of the multidisciplinary team and discusses the essential philosophy required in order for the multidisciplinary team to be truly effective. A diabetes nurse specialist or diabetes nurse educator is the second essential member of a diabetes team. The Royal College of Nursing describes how the paediatric diabetes specialist nurse is likely to be the core of the multidisciplinary team. However, school nurses can be helpful members of the multidisciplinary team when thinking about supporting training of school staff, completion of school medical management plans and facilitating the link between schools/pupils and the diabetes team. Common sense indicates that an effective multidisciplinary team needs much more than just a collection of different individuals with different training and qualifications: the individuals must be working and cooperating together, as this will have a considerable impact on patient and diabetes management.
