Diabetes Education Study Group

CHAIRMAN'S REPORT
Prof. Aldo Maldonato - September 2001

On the occasion of the 25th Meeting of the General Committee of the Diabetes Education Study Group, I wish once again to gratefully acknowledge the long-lasting partnership with Servier which, since its beginnings, has allowed our Study Group to be active and productive. In particular, I wish to thank Mr. Oliver Kirst and Dr Bartek Zmigrodzki for their enthusiastic involvement and participation in the DESG activities.

I am especially grateful to Dr Pesach Segal, the Vice-President; Mr Godfrey Xuereb, the Honorary Secretary; Dr Arun Baksi, the Honorary Treasurer; Dr Mikhail Antsiferov; Ms Eva Maria Baumer, and Dr Alain Golay, the Director of Educational Strategies. I give my warmest thanks also to Ms Margaret Algermissen in the Rome secretariat who, unfortunately for us, has just been induced by family reasons to leave her job.

Since the last General Committee meeting in Jerusalem, in September 2000, the “Basic curriculum for Health Professionals on Diabetes Therapeutic Education”, new Teaching Letters and new Patient Education Basics for Type 2 Diabetes have been published, a DESG-Servier partnership meeting has been held, and the DESG website has been re-designed and updated.

BASIC CURRICULUM FOR HEALTH PROFESSIONALS ON DIABETES THERAPEUTIC EDUCATION
Following a workshop held in Orvieto (TR), Italy in March 2000, and a 3-day meeting of the Executive Committee, held in Rome in January 2001, a 64-page document entitled “Basic Curriculum for Health Professionals on Diabetes Therapeutic Education” has been published.

The document consists in the detailed description of eight one-day modules, covering the basic skills that are required to Health Care Providers in the field of therapeutic patient education, and is based on WHO recommendations, namely on the 1998 WHO Report on continuing education programmes on therapeutic patient education in the field of chronic diseases.

The proposed curriculum allows for different formats of implementation, according to local needs, and provides a tool for the systematic training of diabetes educators.

It has been mailed to all DESG members and to relevant people in healthcare administration in Europe.

In March 2001, it has been presented to Health Care Providers during a joint DESG-Servier partnership meeting, held in Frascati (Rome), Italy.

PUBLICATION AND UPDATE OF TEACHING LETTERS
Two Teaching Letters have been produced this year:
No.23 entitled ‘Diabetes education and cost control: time to measure’ (new series);
No.24 entitled ‘Evaluating diabetes education’ (update).

The next to be published are:
No.25 entitled ‘Approaching the parents of a child with diabetes’ (update);
No.24 entitled ‘Use, misuse and abuse of AV aids' (update).

These Teaching Letters have been or will be produced with the help of the current sponsor, Servier, and all DESG members will receive copies.

They, as well as other DESG productions, are being made available for consultation and free download in the DESG Website, in Acrobat (.pdf) format.

PATIENT EDUCATION BASICS
This series of documents on different topics involving basic therapeutic education for type 2 diabetic patients, initiated in 1997 as the fruit of a stricter collaboration between DESG and Servier, is being continued. Their aim is to provide easy-to-use educational tools for the Health Care Provider wishing to educate the diabetic patient, but unable to find time for a thorough systematic approach. In each of them the most essential messages are summarised and illustrated by drawings.

The Patient Education Basics issues produced this year were the following:
No.13 ‘Intercurrent diseases: a challenge for diabetes control’
No.14 ‘Preventing diabetes in your relatives’.

This year, two more Patient Education Basics will be published:
No.15 ‘Dietary management of type 2 diabetes’
No.16 ‘Approaching the parents of a child with DM’

These documents are also being made available for consultation and free download in the DESG Website, in Acrobat (.pdf) format.

DESG-SERVIER PARTNERSHIP MEETING (STEP 2)
A new DESG/Servier partnership meeting was held in Frascati (Rome) from March 17-23, 2001, in order to present the DESG Basic Curriculum to a group of doctors, nurses, dieticians and psychologists coming from 21 Countries (Austria, Brazil, Centro America, F.O.T, France, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Tunisia, Turkey, and UK).

During the 6-day workshop some modules of the DESG Curriculum were fully implemented , and others were presented and discussed.

The diabetes professionals who attended the workshop are expected to implement such training Curriculum in their respective Countries in a near future (Step 3) according to local needs and opportunities.

DESG INQUIRY ON HCPS’ EDUCATIONAL NEEDS
In June 2000, a 26-item questionnaire has been published on the DESG Website to evaluate the need of training/updating in the topics relevant to Therapeutic Patient Education, as perceived by the Health Care Providers worldwide.

The preliminary results of this inquiry have been presented during the Frascati workshop in March 2001. The final results, based on 3082 questionnaires, are being published on the DESG website.

These results may allow, at least in some countries, to plan training curricula on Therapeutic Patient Education starting from the skills that are perceived as more urgent to acquire by the Health Care Providers themselves.

DESG WEBSITE
The DESG Website (http://www.desg.org), created by a DESG working group, and officially opened on September 1st, 1999, has completed its second year of activity.
Following the rapid evolution of the internet, this year the Website has been completely redesigned, while keeping its original structure. The changes have made the site more intuitive and easier to navigate.

As before, both the General Committee members' list and the complete list of members are in a restricted area of the site, accessible to members only. The majority of the site is still open and offers a source of information, publications, education tools, and a variety of materials produced either by the DESG or by others in the field of therapeutic patient education. In particular, the DESG Teaching Letters, 5-minute survival kit, and Patient Education Basics are regularly published in the “materials” section and are made available in text and/or image format. From this year on, the DESG documents are also available in Acrobat (.pdf) format.

Sections dedicated to national study groups, and different translations of DESG documents, are going to be published in the Website this year.

UPDATED LIST OF MEMBERS
The updated list consists of 730 members from 72 countries. This list is available in the members’ area of the DESG Website, as well as the list of the General Committee members .

For reasons of privacy, only the names and contact information of the current Executive Committee members are in the open part of the Website.

PARTICIPATION IN GRIMENTZ WORKSHOPS
Grimentz Seminars continue to represent a unique model for the interactive learning of specific educational skills. The DESG once again this year provided the funding for a few members’ participation in two workshops held in Grimentz from 16- 21 June, and 23-28 June 2000. The workshops were organised by Prof. Jean-Philippe Assal and Dr Alain Golay, respectively.

The first seminar was entitled ‘Empowerment. Suivre avec efficacité les malades chroniques: Nouveaux concepts, nouvelles approches’. The participants included 50 doctors, nurses, psychologists, pedagogues, dieticians, etc. Three participants’ expenses were covered by the DESG.

The second seminar was entitled ‘La réalité de l'empowerment dans ma pratique clinique. Motiver mon patient obèse diabétique dans le suivi de sa maladie chronique’. The participants included 60 health care providers. The DESG again covered the expenses of three participants.

DESG AWARDS
In order to encourage research in the field of therapeutic patient education, according to a decision approved last year, two 600.00 Euro awards have been assigned by the DESG to the best abstracts submitted respectively to the 37th EASD Congress, and to the Glasgow FEND Conference. The choice has been made by two joint DESG-FEND commissions.

SPONSORSHIP OF THE DESG
The generous sponsorship of Servier has been confirmed for the next year and continues to be of utmost importance to this Study Group. In addition to the already mentioned Servier team, which is so actively collaborating in the DESG activities, I wish to thank particularly Dr Jean-Philippe Seta, Chief of the Executive Office, Dr Laurence Alliot, Director of the Medical Affairs Department and Dr Didier Halimi, Director of the Scientific Communication Department.

FUTURE ACTIVITIES
New DESG-Servier Partnership Workshop
Based on the needs expressed by the HCPs, and the modular structure proposed by the DESG, it will hopefully be possible to plan basic curricula in TPE, lasting six-eight days, to be implemented in different ways and in different places according to local convenience. The DESG contribution to these national or local activities, ranging from the planning phase, to the implementation, to the evaluation phase, is possible.

One of the main activities for the future keeps being the improvement of the DESG Website, with the aim of making it a more functional tool of patient education and communication for the health care providers involved in diabetes therapeutic education.

The promotion of research and training in therapeutic patient education will be continued, also by means of grants and awards.

New Teaching Letters and Patient Education Basics will be published and distributed.

Prof. Aldo MALDONATO
President, Diabetes Education Study Group
September, 2001