Approaches to Foot Complication Prevention: A Survey of Diabetes Educators

Podimetrics is a care management company with a temperature-based foot monitoring solution to help prevent diabetic foot ulcers, one of the most debilitating and costly complications of diabetes. Diabetes educators within the AADE/ADCES encompass a wide array of medical disciplines including nurses, physicians, dieticians, and pharmacists. Diabetes researchers want to better understand the degree to which diabetic foot care and prevention is incorporated into the diabetes education curriculum. To what extent are these topics discussed between diabetes educators and the patients they interact with? And how comfortable are educators in discussing these topics? To gain insight into these questions Podimetrics researchers have designed an online questionnaire survey for completion by AADE members. The general purpose of the survey is to assess the knowledge base, role in management, and resources available to diabetes educators regarding foot complication prevention within a variety of healthcare settings. The specific aim is to collect generalizable data to characterize the current state of diabetic foot education and identify any gaps in knowledge that may be present. Furthermore, if it is found that educators are lacking important knowledge which supports ample diabetic foot health education, approaches to bridge these gaps may be suggested through published recommendations.