[Diabetes education in adult diabetic patients].

Diabetes education has gained a critical role in diabetes care. The empowerment of patients aims to actively influence the course of the disease by self-monitoring and treatment modification. Diabetes education has to be made accessible for all patients with the disease. To be able to provide a structured and validated education program adequate personal as well as space, organizational and financial background are required. Besides an increase in knowledge about the disease it has been shown that structured diabetes education is able to improve diabetes outcome measured by parameters like blood glucose, HbA1c, blood pressure and body weight in follow-up evaluations.