Diabetes & Your Health Care Team

"Hi! My name is Brenda Thompson, registered dietitian and owner of Life Skills Nutrition. In this segment, I'm going to talk about a diabetes healthcare team. Managing diabetes takes education from a variety of healthcare professionals. These professionals include your doctor. It can be family doctor, internist, or an endocrinologist. It is important that your doctor is the chief provider of your education. Your doctor then will refer you to a certified diabetes educator, a nurse, a registered dietitian like myself, a pharmacist. You may work with a counselor, a social worker, a physical therapist, and exercise physiologist, podiatrist, which is a foot doctor, and ophthalmologist, which is an eye doctor, and most importantly, you. To explain what a certified diabetes educator is, it's a healthcare professional, usually the nurse or the registered dietitian who has take the CD certification. They have passed the national test showing that they have expertise in the psychology of diabetes, the drug treatment, blood glucose testing, and complication that may occur with diabetes, mental health issues, and many education principles to help you get through your diabetes. If you were diagnosed with diabetes, it is important that you are sure that you have healthcare education from all of these professionals."