Patient education is an essential aspect of optimal management of diabetes. Patient education is required for type-1 as well as for type-2 diabetes and the topics includes general knowledge of diabetes, nutrition, exercise, care of diabetes during illness, adherence to diabetes medications, lifestyle changes, and if possible self-monitoring of blood glucose. Patient education is essential for diabetes patients for improving compliance to the treatment regimen and helping the patient to understand that he/she should take the responsibility for their own care.

Educating patients of diabetes is not a one time education (should not be one or two visits to a diabetes educator), rather it is an ongoing continuous process, which should include regular contact with the diabetes patients for reinforcement of the aspects which the diabetes patients learn.

The goal of educating diabetes patients is to improve their individual self-efficacy and their self-management ability, as diabetes is a complex metabolic disorder which ultimately the patient has to learn to manage. The main aim of imparting diabetes education for diabetes patients is to improve control of plasma glucose, reduce/prevent the complications of diabetes and to improve the overall quality of life of diabetes patients.

The patient education process for diabetes patients should be done in steps for precise information and also to help the diabetes patient to understand the process clearly and better, so that the diabetes-related goals can be achieved by the patient easily.

At first define the problem of diabetes and related topics for individual patients and assess the understanding capacity of the patient, which can be helpful for educating the individual diabetes patients. Next is to help the patient identify the short-term and long-term goals in diabetes management and to help them reach the goals easily and also to help the diabetes patients evaluate the results they achieved in terms of reaching the short-term and long-term goals in diabetes management and to identify what has been learnt. The learning process for diabetes education is a continuous and ongoing process and should not stop after few sessions of lectures. The role of the diabetes educator is to provide information, collaborate during the goal-setting process and support the patient’s efforts.

Diabetes patients should follow the following steps for adequate control of the blood sugar level, which can prevent complications of diabetes, both short term and long term complications.

Step 1:

Find out the type of diabetes you have. If you have type-1 diabetes you must take insulin and if you have type-2 diabetes, it may be possible to control diabetes (blood sugar) by diet and increased physical activity.

Step 2:

Get regular and high quality care from diabetes specialists. Keep regular contact with your doctor, diabetes educator and nutritionist and follow their advice strictly.

Step 3:

Learn to control your blood sugar with right information from experts in the field and by following the instructions properly. Learn which foods to avoid and which food items to take liberally for control of blood sugar. Follow the instructions given to you by the diabetes educator regarding physical activity and other lifestyle modifications.

Step 4:

Learn to test your own blood sugar level at home using the devices which can be used at home. The devices may not give exact blood sugar level, but are very useful as they give a good idea of blood sugar level. The home devices give reading of blood sugar which is very close to actual blood sugar level. Self testing of blood sugar is very important in control of diabetes.

Step 5:

Visit your doctor regularly to identify and prevent long-term complications of diabetes. Visit specialist doctors for check up to prevent diabetic retinopathy, diabetic nephropathy, diabetic neuropathy, myocardial infarct and other long term organ related complications of diabetes, such as diabetic foot.

Step 6:

If any long term complications of diabetes develop, treat them promptly and adequately. Get treated by experts.