Put a Diabetes educator on your team

Living a healthy life with diabetes: the Diabetes Care Center offers a wide variety of inpatient and outpatient services to help patients of all ages manage their diabetes.

It’s all about teamwork

Managing diabetes is all about teamwork. Working with your physician, you will work to find the therapy that is most effective for you. But there’s another diabetes expert who’s ready to team up with you: your Certified Diabetes Educator.

The Diabetes Care Center at Tarzana Regional Medical Center has a multi-disciplinary team of diabetes educators, which includes Certified Diabetes Educators (CDE’s), physicians, nurses, registered dietitians and mental health professionals. Their goal is to help those with diabetes live life to its fullest. And because the team approach is so important in diabetes, the primary care physician remains centrally involved in any treatment provided through the Diabetes Care Center.

Why is a diabetes educator so important?

Diabetes management can be a lot to handle. There’s so much to learn and a lot of lifestyle adjustments to make. Whether you’ve been newly diagnosed or have had diabetes for a long time, a diabetes educator can work with you to help you to master the ins and outs of managing diabetes.

Think of the Diabetes Care Center as your own personal coach

Diabetes educators have a talent for assessing your particular needs and providing practical solutions. You may meet one-on-one or in a class setting. Either way, you’ll find it easy to talk to a diabetes educator. With specialized training in diabetes, the goal of the diabetes educator is to make sure that you know what to do to stay healthy.

How does a newly diagnosed adult, teen or child deal with diabetes?

With the help of the diabetes educator, you’ll learn how to work new routines into the way you live. Whether as an inpatient or outpatient, our comprehensive approach to diabetes self-management is designed to make the transition to living with diabetes easier. It may also benefit persons who have been living with diabetes for any length of time and need additional assistance with a specific skill.

Still finding it difficult to keep your blood sugar in range? A diabetes educator can troubleshoot your problems and help you recognize high and low blood sugars, plus what you need to do to bring your blood sugar back in range. The result? You can stay healthy and reduce the risk of complications of diabetes such as heart disease, blindness, kidney failure and nerve damage.

Diabetes educators can also help you make traveling and dining out easier and healthy; learn how to handle sick days when your blood sugar levels are unpredictable; and become more confident in you ability to manage your diabetes.

The diabetes educators at the Diabetes Care Center will provide you with instruction about:

• Medications, including insulin instruction when needed
• Diabetes overview
• Blood sugar testing for home use
• Prevention of diabetes related problems
• Nutrition and meal planning
• Foot care
• Exercise benefits and precautions
• Stress management

Other specialized services offered at the Diabetes Care Center include:

• Insulin pump initiation
• Diabetes and pregnancy
• Diabetes prevention screening
• Diabetes and children

Outpatient services for ongoing wellness

The outpatient program is designed to provide individuals and their family members with the information they need to lead a healthy life.

Classes include:

• Nutrition Assessment
• Healthy Living with Diabetes
• Carbohydrate counting
• Diabetes and pregnancy
• Insulin pump evaluation
• Individual consultation

Support Groups

• Adult group – weekly
• Insulin pump user group – monthly
• Ongoing parents and children groups

Community Outreach

The Diabetes Care Center also participates in community outreach programs, participates in and organizes an annual health fair and offers lectures on a wide variety of topics.

For more information, please call the Diabetes Care Center at 818-345-8955.

For a physician referral, please call 1-800-CARE-NOW (227-3669).