Educating those with diabetes is a very important part of diabetes care. Education helps patients understand their condition, how to manage it and gives them the opportunity to ask questions and talk with others.

The National Institute for Health Care Excellence (NICE) reccomend that everyone newly diagnosed with diabetes should be offered a structured, educational course. The complications of diabetes are a massive financial burden to the NHS and have a negative impact upon the patients quality of life. In the long term education saves money and improves quality of life.

However according to the National Diabetes Audit; education is not being offered to all newly diagnosed patient. It was found that just 13.5% of 239,251 newly diagnosed patients were offered an educational course.

Diabetes UK and Bupa have developed an online programme to try and tackle this problem. It is called ‘Type 2 Diabetes and Me’ Available at: http://www.type2diabetesandme.co.uk.

(Podiatry Now, 2014)