568-P: Living With Diabetes—A Hands-on Workshop

Background: Diabetes affects 37.3 million people, with a total estimated cost of $327 billion. Studies have shown significant knowledge gaps in resident education regarding diabetes management, resulting in medical errors and inappropriate care. Although studies show that hands-on diabetes education is beneficial, most curricula are delivered as online, self-paced, or case-based learning, without insight into the day-to-day management of diabetes.

Description: Using personal experience of living with diabetes as a unique educational tool, we created an education session to share the patient experience of daily diabetes tasks, teach diabetes management skills, and foster peer teaching. The hour-long interactive session included an introduction about the presenter’s experience with diabetes and three 15-minute hands-on sessions, where participants counted their own carbohydrates for a meal, tested their blood sugar and/or tried on a Dexcom G7 sensor, and put on an insulin pump site.

Methods: We presented the session to pediatric residents and clerkship students, and surveyed participants on their understanding of diabetes care before and after the session and their overall rating of the session.

Results: A total of 17 participants answered the pre-session survey and 7 answered the post-session survey. Prior to the session, the proportion of participants indicating they somewhat or strongly agreed they knew what it felt like to check a blood glucose, give an insulin injection or pump insertion, or to perform the work of carbohydrate counting was 53%, 18%, and 29%; post-session these proportions increased to 100%, 100%, and 86% respectively. All the post-session respondents somewhat or strongly agreed they found the session valuable and would recommend to other residents.

Discussion: The session increased participants’ understanding of daily tasks of diabetes management and was perceived as a valuable part of residency education. Future directions include expanding to internal medicine and family practice residents.