Research Article Summary: Management of Children with Diabetes in the School Setting

Dr. Bree Holtz’s summary of the article, Management of Children with Diabetes in the School Setting

Article Overview

This journal article is about the role of diabetes educators when there is a child with diabetes in school. The article is a position piece of the American Academy of Diabetes Educators. While the article does mention type 2 diabetes management and other types of diabetes, this article seems to be generally focused on management of type 1.

My biggest takeaway

It offers a description of what a diabetes educator does and the role they can take when trying to navigate care of a child in the school setting. This is the part of the article that I thought might be the most helpful for parents to know. From the, admittedly very few parents I have talked to, I’m not sure that people are using diabetes educators in this way. The article says that a diabetes educator can (p.35, direct quote):

Be the primary contact and liaison between the school, parent/guardian, and diabetes health care team
Be a resource for training and educating the school nurse and school personnel in the care of students with diabetes
Educate and facilitate behavior change of students with diabetes, parents/guardians, and school personnel
Provide resources and expertise to help develop, implement, and update the written school-based diabetes medical management plan (DMMP)

Other key points

The paper then briefly describes:

laws surrounding care for students with diabetes;
plans for diabetes management

They also go on to describe how the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) 7 Self-Care Behaviors can be applied to the school setting. This is something that they are really promoting throughout the profession and it is called AADE7 for short. These behaviors include: