[Diabetes education and counselling in adult patients with diabetes (Update 2019)]

Diabetes education and self-management play a critical role in diabetes care. Patient empowerment aims to actively influence the course of the disease by self-monitoring and subsequent treatment modification as well as the ability of patients to integrate diabetes into their daily life and to appropriately adapt it to their life style situation. Diabetes education has to be made accessible for all persons with the disease. In order to be able to provide a structured and validated education program, adequate personnel as well as space, organizational and financial prerequisites are required. Besides an increase in knowledge about the disease it has been shown that a structured diabetes education is able to improve diabetes outcome as measured by parameters, such as blood glucose, HbA1c, blood pressure and body weight in follow-up evaluations. Modern education programs emphasize the ability of patients to integrate diabetes into everyday life, stress physical activity besides healthy eating as important components of life style therapy and use interactive methods in order to increase the acceptance of personal responsibility. Specific situations (e. g. impaired hypoglycemia awareness, illness, travel) and technical innovations, such as glucose sensor systems and insulin pumps require additional educational measures by information exchange in small groups supported by adequate electronic tools (diabetes apps and diabetes web portals).