What is diabetes distress and what do primary care practices need to know?

People with diabetes have many daily management requirements that can have an emotional impact that may impair their ability to manage their disease. Diabetes distress is defined as the emotional toll of living with the day-to-day burden of diabetes. Diabetes distress is very common among people with diabetes, and the good news is it is very responsive to intervention. This module will describe diabetes distress and discuss key interventions for primary care practices.

Learning Objectives

After completing this module, the learner should be able to:

• Define diabetes distress and the impacts it can have diabetes management.
• Describe the importance of using first-person language when working with people with diabetes.
• Utilize validated measures to assess for diabetes distress.
• Facilitate supportive and individually tailored interventions for people experiencing diabetes distress. 

Who should complete this module?

The information in this module is valuable for all primary care team members, including clinical (clinicians and staff), operational (front and back office), and administrators (leadership and management).

Acknowledgements

The development of this module was supported by the American Diabetes Association grant 7-25-JDFPC-0404.

Module Authors:

Marisa Kostiuk, PhD, Bonnie Jortberg, PhD, RDN, CDCES, Tamara Oser, MD, and Lauri Connelly MS, Department of Family Medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Colorado

Lawrence Fisher, PhD, ABPP, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of California, San Francisco