Emergency management of diabetic ketoacidosis in children

Clinical guidelines and flowcharts published by Children’s Health Queensland.


Diabetic ketoacidosis

Clinical guidelines

Use the following guideline to help recognise hyperglycaemia in children and prevent diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA).

Early recognition of hyperglycaemia in children under 16 years (PDF 1007 kB)

Information to use with your patients

The Simplified Sick Day Management tool (PDF 372 kB) helps patients with low health literacy manage sick days.

Clinician education

Queensland Health staff can do the Preventing DKA at diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus in children under 16 course on iLearn.


Managing diabetes at school

Diabetes Queensland has developed school action and management plans to support students living with diabetes. These are recommended by the Queensland Diabetes Clinical Network.

Queensland state school students get diabetes support through the state schools nursing service.

The NDSS Diabetes in Schools program aims to unite families, schools, and health professionals to help students with type 1 diabetes thrive academically.

Information to use with your patients

Understanding diabetes

The National Diabetes Services Scheme has resources about understanding diabetes. Topics include insulin therapy, glucose monitoring, exercise and food, and emotional health.

Breakthrough T1D (formerly JDRF) has resources about understanding type 1 diabetes.

Nutrition and carbohydrates

The Baker Heart & Diabetes Institute have a Carbohydrate counting in exchanges fact sheet and a Carbohydrates and Glycaemic Index (GI) fact sheet. These will help your patients use food labels and tools to count carbohydrates, and how to identify non-carbohydrate foods.

Information published by Children’s Health Queensland

Posters for public areas

Display these posters for recognising early signs of type 1 diabetes in waiting rooms and other public areas.

Last updated: 9 April 2025