Impact of a single one-to-one education session on glycemic control in patients with diabetes.

Background: Education is one of the pivotal aspects of diabetes care. The impact of education has been found to be efficacious in the short term, but tends to lose efficacy in the long term. The hypothesis tested here was that one-to-one education would confer knowledge that would be reflected in metabolic improvement in this group of participants with diabetes.

Methods: Thirty-nine patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and poor diabetes control attended a one-to-one diabetic and dietetic education session with a diabetic specialist nurse and a diabetes specialist dieticican. Glycemic control was assessed by measuring serum glycosolated hemoglobin (HbA1c) measurements before the session and at 6 and 12 months afterwards.

Results: The HbA1c levels fell significantly in the whole group to 8.0 ± 0.5% (P < 0.05) at 6 months and to 8.3 ± 0.7% (P < 0.05) at the final visit from a baseline of 9.2 ± 0.5%. Compared to female patients, male patients had a similar drop in HbA1c at 6 months of 1.1%, which persisted until the final visit, when the drop was –1.3% vs 0.3% (P < 0.05).

Conclusions: A single episode of one-to-one diabetic and dietetic education to subjects with poor diabetic control is effective in improving short- and long-term diabetic control for up to 1 year. Male patients were found to have a better response than female patients.