Diabetes Education: A Multidisciplinary Team Approach

Diabetes mellitus is one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity in the United States, showing an incidence of over 14 million individuals, with the numbers increasing yearly. Current evidence suggests that maintaining normal blood glucose levels will result in preventing or lessening the degree of acute and chronic complications of diabetes. Therefore, be-cause many of the complications of diabetes may be prevented or lessened by strict glycemic control, it is of the utmost importance that the individual with diabetes understand the roles of diet, exercise, and insulin/oral hypoglycemics in the management of his or her diabetes. This is an area in which diabetic education plays an important role. The properly edu-cated individual with diabetes can learn to increase o