[Diabetes education in adult diabetic patients]

Diabetes education and self management has gained a critical role in diabetes care. Patient empowerment aims to actively influence the course of the disease by self-monitoring and treatment modification, as well as integration of diabetes in patients' daily life to achieve changes in lifestyle accordingly.Diabetes education has to be made accessible for all patients with the disease. To be able to provide a structured and validated education program adequate personal as well as space, organizational and financial background are required. Besides an increase in knowledge about the disease it has been shown that structured diabetes education is able to improve diabetes outcome measured by parameters like blood glucose, HbA1c, blood pressure and body weight in follow-up evaluations. Modern education programs emphasize the ability of patients to integrate diabetes in everyday life and stress physical activity besides healthy eating as a main component of lifestyle therapy and use interactive methods in order to increase the acceptance of personal responsibility.