Establishing and sustaining state-of-the-art diabetes patient education programs: research and recommendations.

Frequently, diabetes educators in hospitals report meeting severe organizational barriers when attempting to implement advances in diabetes patient education (DPE). This paper reports on how eight successful diabetes patient education programs coped with potential barriers. The results are based on interviews of professionals who played central roles in introducing and sustaining the programs. Many of the identified problems centered around two issues--acquiring needed resources and communicating about the program to a variety of key groups.