Unmute: Delivering Diabetes Education Online

The first time the little green video icon lit up on Epic, my heart rate kicked up a notch After years of providing diabetes education to both individuals and groups, delivering virtual health care was making my palms sweat Like many educators, I rely on a variety of props, visual aids, drawings, and handouts to explain diabetes and how to manage it Many of us employ a multimedia approach to drive home key messages We look for physical clues from patients that indicate if they are engaged and comprehending We watch for the moment they lean in, when the light bulb goes off, and they respond, “Nobody has ever explained it that way before ”Over the years, I had developed an arsenal of tools and strategies to tackle the variety of questions that come up in diabetes education I had mastered the art of whiteboard illustrations and explaining digestion, absorption, insulin release, and glucose uptake in a way a fifth grader could understand Then COVID-19 hit, and I had to find a different way Ambulatory clinics were shut down In-person care was limited to necessary and urgent procedures only We were told to work from home, but just figuring out how to log into the health care system from my bedroom raised my cortisol level How was I going to empower patients through a video camera?