What does an educator do? Diabetes is a multisystem disease affecting most organs in the body. Managing diabetes holistically in a team means each member focuses on their area of expertise.
For the educator this is explaining how insulins work, how the different oral meds work, what sugars should and could be at different times of the day, dangers of hypos and highs, how to inject, how to test etc in the newly diagnosed.
One very important aspect is setting goals around targets like A1c as well as variability, post meal values etc as well as any other goals regarding diabetes like exercise, staving off burn out and depression and a whole host of possible goals.
The educator in many respects is a co-ordinator or conductor of the processes and aids very much with direction and the trajectory of the diabetic path.
This critical role actually can make the difference in getting to target as well as staying at target which translates to less health expenditure downstream as well as healthier functioning patients with quality of life.
Educators are core to diabetes management top of the range.
News supplied by Dr Claudine Lee.