Tina Canada, Diabetes Education Nurse at OSF in Monmouth, is one of three certified diabetes educators at the facility. Over the past year, OSF has successfully lowered 65 percent of patient A1C levels by 1 percentage point or more. Canada credits the educational opportunities offered by the facility.
“A lot of times people have misconceptions about what diabetes is all about and what they need to do to manage their diabetes. All studies show that education helps people improve their outcomes and improve their ability to self-manage their diabetes,” Canada said.
OSF offers a variety of classes to help educate those with diabetes and those who may be at-risk of developing diabetes. The facility offers programs that focus on meal planning, physical activity, an insulin pump support group, diabetes support group, and much more.
Canada also touched on other types of procedures and practices that diabetes patients can use, such blood sugar testing using a glucose monitor.
“You can wear it for six days. During that time, you check your blood sugar four times a day to calibrate the equipment. The monitor is checking your blood sugar continuously throughout the day. You come in, we take it off, put it through a cleaning process, and download the data, and you get a graph of what your blood sugar is,” she said.
For more information on these diabetes classes, log on to osfhealthcare.org or call 734-1424.
written by Jackson Kane
