Building Competency in Diabetes Education THE ESSENTIALS

2-32 | CHAPTER 2

augmented by personal contact (99,100,106,107). Technology has also been used extensively for diabetes SMS and this will be discussed later in this chapter. The future will include the use of technological interventions to improve outcomes in all aspects of diabetes self management. As educators, we should familiarize ourselves with these tools and continue to seek ways to integrate them into our educational programs. The take-home message for the educator regarding the methods of delivery of SME is that there is no one delivery method suitable for all (68,86). The educator needs to match the content area to the method, assess the learning preferences and abilities of the patient and be adaptable in their delivery.

Table 4. SME enablers for healthy diabetes self-management behaviours

Interventions

Strategies

Didactic

Goal setting

Cognitive

Problem solving

Behavioural/Social

Motivational

Outcome Evaluation Tools for SME All SME interventions require evaluation as to how successful they have been at promoting diabetes self-management behaviours. Using the goals of SME as stated at the beginning of this chapter and the standards for diabetes education in Canada, outcome measures can be evaluated in many different capacities. The Standards Recognition Program supported by Diabetes Canada is an excellent tool that provides individual programs the ability to evaluate themselves in terms of their structure, their processes and their outcomes. The SRP program can be found on the Diabetes Canada website.