From the Editor
The theme for this edition of the ADE is ‘practice essentials’ and we have tried to cover many of the key areas of practice that you told us you wanted more of, in the last readership survey.
With an increasing number of medications now available for managing type 2 diabetes, many of you requested an update on this topic, so we asked Jane Ludington, Senior Pharmacist and CDE from St Vincent’s Hospital Diabetes Service, to provide an overview of the currently available medications, when they might be used and key safety considerations.
Confused about carbs? With all the current focus on low carb high fat and ketogenic diets, it’s a topic most of us are likely to be getting questions about. Accredited Practising Dietitian, Dr Alan Barclay explains where carbohydrates fit in the diet of someone with diabetes, the evidence for and against low carb diets and the role of carbohydrate counting.
Most CDE’s would be aware of the research showing a high prevalence of diabetes distress in those we work with, which can be a barrier to self-care and can lead to burnout. But how do we assess this and what do we do about it in practice? The 2016 Jan Baldwin National CDE of the Year, Ann Morris, is passionate about this area and explains how to measure diabetes distress in practice and how to support those in whom we identify diabetes distress.
Many of said you wanted to learn more about research so we asked Professor Trisha Dunning, one of the key presenters in the recent ADEA Research 101 Webinar Series and the Chair of the ADEA Diabetes Research Foundation Council, to provide some tips for diabetes educators to get started in research. This is a must read if learning more about research is one of your continuing professional development goals.
We explored the issue of diabetes educator burnout in a previous edition of the ADE and in this edition, Kim Poyner, RN and certified Wellcoach, explains one way of reducing practitioner burnout, through the use of person-centred care.
You also wanted to know more about helping clients with behaviour change and the use of motivational interviewing (MI). Tara McGregor is an APD, counsellor and psychotherapist who runs training for health professionals wanting to develop competent counselling skills for facilitating behaviour change. We asked Tara for advices around using MI in practice to help our clients who are ambivalent to making behavioural changes.
We also have two original research articles to share with you in this edition. Kara Minkler, RN CDE from the Sydney Children’s Hospital Network discusses their research showing positive outcomes from group education for children, young people and their families in a tertiary centre. Pollyema Antees, APD from Northwest Nutrition, and colleagues, highlight the issue of food insecurity and the importance of considering access to and affordability of healthy foods for our clients.
Finally, Rachel Freeman from ADEA discusses managing ethical and professional boundaries as a CDE, with some examples of ethical dilemmas we might face in practice and how they could be managed.
Also in this issue, we have articles on getting the most from your ADEA membership and accessing clinical guidelines for use in your practice, as well as our usual NDSS update and board profiles.
Finally, a reminder that you can read the ADE via https://ade.adea.com.au on any digital device and can also print, share and comment on articles as well as being able to browse or search for past articles. If you prefer read offline, you can print any articles you would like to read, either in hard copy or as a PDF which you can then save and read later. You can find instructions and some key features on the tutorials below.
I once again would like to thank our hard-working EAG, and our authors, for helping to bring this edition together. We hope you enjoy reading it and welcome your feedback.