LEARNING-DIFFICULTIES OF DIABETIC-PATIENTS - A SURVEY OF EDUCATORS

This study was designed to shed light on the learning difficulties of diabetic patients. An open-ended questionnaire was sent to 85 health c are professionals working in the field of diabetes and nutrition who h ad been trained in patient education techniques. They were asked to de scribe the skills that were the easiest to teach patients and those th at patients mastered the best, as well as the skills they found hardes t to teach patients, those that patients mastered the least and those that gave rise to errors persisting after the patients education was c ompleted. On the whole, the results showed that the educators found it easy to teach techniques: patients mastered procedures well and made few mistakes. In contrast, diabetic patients seem to have problems lea rning skills, such as insulin dose adjustment, that require complex pr oblem-solving (involving multiple variables). Based on these findings, the authors discuss the notions of learning complexity and the time n eeded for successful patient education. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Irel and Ltd. All rights reserved.