Getting Ready for Your Diabetes Care Visit

You are the person in charge of your diabetes. Being prepared for your health care visit can help you get the information you need to manage your disease.
For more information, visit www.niddk.nih....
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Transcript:
DR GAVIN: The reason it's so important for a person to prepare for the encounter with the healthcare team is because this is going to be where the person gets the information that they need to help solve the problems that they may have been having in the management of their diabetes.
Because you need to know what to do for yourself as an expectation between this visit and the
next one you make. The kinds of things that a patient ought to be sure to bring with them when they come for a visit, one is to make sure that they have carefully outlined any recent problems that they've had... things that they're concerned about, so that those will get attention during that visit.
They must get clarification about what things they need to do better, and how could they
do those things better to improve that aspect of management. They should bring the results of their
glucose monitoring over a period of time, their log books or their meters that need to be downloaded. They should have a list of all of their medications -- what they are, how often they are taking them - including non-prescription medications.
Sharing information between the patient and the healthcare team is really critical because, the patient really has to feel that they trust the healthcare team, that they can be open, they can be honest about anything that they have concerns about.
I encourage patients to write down their questions, to take those with them to the visit, make sure that all of the issues get vetted, and then to write down the responses.
You don't need permission to ask questions about your health. You don't need permission to write notes on responses that are given to you about your health. You are really, ultimately, the person in charge of managing your diabetes.
You are getting advice from a team that you have engaged to help you with that, and you have to make sure that that team functions in a way that's going to maximally benefit you and the outcomes that you deserve.