Blood Glucose Testing

Some community pharmacies  offer a Blood Glucose Testing Service (BGTS) or offer Blood Glucose test kit to their patients / customers. Pharmacies can help the patient understand their heart health, cholesterol levels, stroke risk and of course their diabetes risk all at the same time. It is also an ideal opportunity to give advice on how to improve health and wellbeing plus offer advice to help prevent these conditions developing in the future.

Many patients choose to test at home and there is a huge variety of Finger prickers / lancets and Blood Glucose testing machines available from the community pharmacy. Many of the newer ones e.g. the FreeStyle Libre range of Blood Glucose Monitoring Systems do not even require a blood sample as they send a continuous blood glucose reading to an app on the customer / patients smart phone. As well as the obvious benefit of not needing lots of blood samples it allows the patient and the health professional to continuously monitor their levels and look for trends e.g. a gradual rise or fall in blood glucose levels.

If done in the pharmacy the pharmacist may well look at other health and lifestyle factors at the same time e.g. lipids as well as factors which increase  risk of these conditions, such as:

• Diet
• Being overweight
• Smoking
• Excess alcohol consumption
• Physical inactivity