If you have diabetes, you may have heard about certified diabetes educators, or CDEs. You may have wondered if a CDE could help you better manage your diabetes — after all, you see your doctor regularly and you check your blood sugar regularly. So what else could a CDE do to help?
Turns out, a certified diabetes educator offers a wealth of advice and resources for diabetes management beyond what most patients can do on their own.
“Our goal is that everyone with diabetes see a diabetes educator,” says registered nurse and certified diabetes educator Joan Bardsley of MedStar Health Research Institute in Hyattsville, Maryland. Bardsley is also a spokesperson for the American Association of Diabetes Educators, a former president of AADE and incoming chair of the National Certification Board for Diabetes Educators.
[Read: Don’t Fall for These 6 Myths About Eating With Diabetes.]
“From an endocrinologist’s perspective, CDEs are absolutely invaluable to comprehensive diabetes care,” says endocrinologist Dr. Sarah Rettinger of Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California. “Certified diabetes educators can help with every stage of diabetes, from prediabetes to patients requiring insulin.”
A certified diabetes educator can help you eat healthier, be active, monitor diabetes, take medications, problem-solve, reduce risks and cope with your diabetes — and help you fit those strategies into your daily routine. Ultimately, if you follow the advice of a CDE, you learn to better manage your own health. (By the way, those seven areas of care mentioned above come from the AADE’s 7 Self-Care Behaviors.) Diabetes educators see all types of patients and can help them all to fit in better care strategies, from the busy executive to the working single mom.
“Diabetes self-management is an interactive process,” says nurse practitioner Evelyne Fleury-Milfort, a diabetes educator with the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. “Both educators and patients are experts. Educators have the expertise in specific content and the clinical aspects of the disease. However, patients are the experts in their own life.”
Meeting with diabetes educators can help reduce hospital admissions and lower your hemoglobin A1C levels. That all contributes to a longer, healthier life, Fleury-Milfort says.
Typically, a certified diabetes educator has a background in another health profession, such as registered dietitian, registered nurse and similar positions. However, he or she has obtained extra training and experience specialized within diabetes. Diabetes educators work in a variety of healthcare settings, including hospitals, doctors’ offices, home health and wellness programs. Sometimes a CDE may also work with other types of patients beyond those with diabetes, says Nicole Anziani, a certified diabetes educator at Fit4D in New York. For example, a nurse who is a CDE may work in a primary care clinic and help with a range of health concerns.
[Read: 7 Healthy Snack Ideas When You Have Diabetes.]
So when should you see a certified diabetes educator? In 2016, the AADE, American Diabetes Association and Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics came together to establish four important times to visit a CDE:
1. When you are newly diagnosed with diabetes.
2. Once a year, as your life circumstances may change over time.
3. When you have complications, ranging from vision problems to depression to kidney disease.
4. When there’s a transition in care. For example, when a teen with diabetes goes off to college and must manage diabetes independently or an elderly person moves into a new living situation.
Although these guidelines are geared toward patients with Type 2 diabetes, CDEs also are helpful when you have prediabetes, Type 1 diabetes or gestational diabetes. Rettinger praises the ability of CDEs to offer a range of care to different types of diabetes patients and to go over use of insulin, carbohydrate counting and insulin pump settings, among other tasks.
Of course, insurance coverage to visit a CDE is always a concern. The specifics vary, but many insurance companies will cover some visits to a CDE — however, you typically need a referral from your health care provider to see a CDE. Often, insurance companies follow what Medicare (used for people age 65 and over) will cover, which includes a specific number of hours the first year diabetes is diagnosed and a smaller number of hours thereafter. Insurance companies also may cover both support group meetings for diabetes as well as one-to-one care. In fact, research finds that the best health benefits come from the combination of group and one-to-one meetings with CDEs, Bardsley says.
[Read: 7 Things Not to Say to Someone With Diabetes.]
At this point, you may still wonder what it’s like to meet with a diabetes educator and what you will get out of the meetings. To make this clearer, here are five common misconceptions about meeting with a certified diabetes educator:
— “A CDE only provides information I can get on the internet.” The difference is that a CDE can address diabetes care specifically for your life and provide reliable, accurate health information.
— “I don’t need to meet with someone to tell me what to do.” This is a common misconception. A CDE will coach you in establishing a good plan for diabetes care, and he or she isn’t there to judge, Bardsley says.
— “My doctor tells me everything I need to know.” Doctors are obviously major partners in your diabetes management. However, doctors typically only have about 15 minutes to spend with patients, so a CDE can supplement and support what your doctor has advised.
— “I can do it all on my own.” Think for a second about all the ways diabetes affects your life. This includes at work, home and school. “There is so much to learn when one receives a diabetes diagnosis,” Anziani says. “A CDE can not only assist with the learning curve, but they can connect the dots, looking at multiple realms of care.” A CDE can help you take a global look at better self-care — including how to lower your health care costs.
— “A diabetes educator will only help me with my medications.” Actually, what CDEs do is much more broad than that, Anziani says.
More from U.S. News
Which Medical Screenings Should You Have in 2017?
The 12 Best Diets to Prevent and Manage Diabetes
How a Certified Diabetes Educator Can Enhance Your Diabetes Care originally appeared on usnews.com