VIDEO: Approaching treatment planning for patients with diabetes

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Yeah, so if I have a patient with diabetes, I like to think of myself as a resource for them. I'm a resource for information and I'm a resource for tools. And so I think the first step is for me to kind of understand where they're at in their process, where they're at in their condition in terms of the progression of the condition, and then I'd like to understand, once I know where they're at, say, "These are the tools that I think would be most useful for you, which of these tools are you interested in?" And I'll just give you an example. I saw a couple patients yesterday, one of them has Type 1 diabetes, and this person has done a pretty good job managing his diabetes with tools that are quite old. And I said, you know, "There's a lot of these other things that you could be using." And he said, "I'm not interested in them."

And so again, I need to, as a clinician, respect that, you know, this is their journey, and so I'm going to offer that. I saw a patient with newly diagnosed Type 2 diabetes yesterday, I also offered about some of the newer data saying that we could do very intensive treatment upfront that could induce remission, which means you may not need medication in the future. And that was a little bit more than they were ready for at the time. So they said, "Could we do step one and we could revisit this later?" So I guess the plan, really based upon patient preferences, patient's willingness to engage in the plan, my job is to offer them tools, support them through the journey, and keep checking in.