[Study of collective nutrition education sessions for diabetic type II patients]

As with many chronic diseases, most French diabetes services for patients with type II diabetes now have a structured reception approach including collective educational sessions in the form of targeted workshops, thematic days, or even programs with several sessions. The aim of our study is to understand the interlocutory dynamics favorable to the adoption of new cognitions and attitudes during these sessions.

We studied the verbal exchanges of nine collective nutrition education sessions (five focusing on knowledge input, and four implementing behavioral simulation). A total of 76 patients with type II diabetes (per group of six to 13 participants) and 12 group leaders (nurses, dieticians or nutritionists) contributed to this study, based on audio recording, and analysis of these sessions lasting two hours on average (with between 4345 and 8592 words per session). The nine corpora were the subject of two types of content analysis: lexical and dialogic, with the N'vivo 8 software.

The results of this study suggest very precisely several ways to improve the content of the informational contributions of these educational sessions. The study of their process also makes it possible to distinguish between self-disclosure and social support in communication between participants. Finally, this study checks the effectiveness of the different types of framing of health messages in the discourse of the group leaders to facilitate the adhesion of the participants.

In conclusion, it appears that the reaction spontaneously verbalized by the participants during the course of the educational situation, in these sessions, can be considered as an interesting indicator of their impact. The results may have implications for the development of nutritional education programs and group leader training.