Dealing with diagnosis of diabetes

Abstract

The diagnosis of diabetes is both a life-changing day for the person who receives it, and a challenging interaction for the time-pressured health professional who delivers it. This article reviews the evidence of factors that facilitate a more helpful diagnosis conversation, describes the importance of this initial conversation on long-term clinical outcomes, and offers suggestions drawn from psychological models on how to more effectively manage the diagnosis conversation. 'Empathic willingness' has been found to both assist the professional to feel less frustrated, and improve the patient's experience and clinical outcomes in the long-term. 'Empathic willingness' can be taught and fostered by clinical psychologists (or their equivalents) yet are absent in the majority of settings in which people with diabetes are cared for. While many health conditions allow us to treat the 'body', diabetes and other conditions that require self-management demand that we treat the 'person' - including their emotions. The link between the lack of structured time in the care of our patients to attend to their psychology/emotions and the poor clinical outcomes/high 'did not attend' rates that we see in our NHS diabetes services is discussed.