Teaching and motivating patients to achieve treatment goals

Diabetes is a complex, demanding, lifelong disease managed primarily by the individual and/or the family. The key to successful diabetes care is an approach that supports the patients' efforts to modify behavior in a systematic way. The management of this chronic disease is to provide the individual with knowledge, psychomotor skills, and effective psychological coping and most importantly continued motivation to facilitate lifestyle modifications. The process of adult learning is not an exact science. It is highly individualized. This chapter addresses practical aspects in diabetes self-management education. It discusses how to evaluate the readiness of the individual to enter the learning process. It describes strategies on how to motivate adults to learn diabetes self-management. The chapter also provides practical recommendations on how a physician can facilitate adult learning in a clinical setting. It addresses the issue of literacy and adherence to the self-management regimen. It also describes an innovative strategy to assist patients in goal setting and action planning. At the end of the chapter is a sampling of resources for patient education.