Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes can lead to acute and chronic complications compromising health and quality of life. However outcomes can be improved with careful self-management and maintaining ‘good control’, i.e. control of blood glucose levels, lipids, blood pressure and body weight, through following a healthy diet, physical activity, moderating alcohol intake and stopping smoking. The value of patient education is evident from research demonstrating that patients who never received diabetes education showed a striking four-fold increased risk of a major complication1.
Self-management is key to good diabetes care and patient education should be at the heart of any service. Standard 3 in the English diabetes service framework standards document refers to empowering people with diabetes to ‘enhance their personal control over the day-to-day management of their diabetes in a way that enables them to experience the best possible quality of life’2. This is achieved by the provision of information, education and psychological support. Standard 3 goes on to reaffirm that ‘people with diabetes need the knowledge, skills and motivation to assess their risks, to understand what they will gain from changing their behaviour or lifestyle and to act on that understanding by engaging in appropriate behaviours’. Patient education, information and involvement are also priorities set out in the other national diabetes frameworks and health plans.
March 2003
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