NEWSLETTER
MY
Spring 2015 Volume 51
Sharing Your Diabetes Dr. Edelman’s Corner
INSIDE Sugar Surfing Page 3
Struggling with Weight Control - Saxenda Page 4
Giving Back... Page 6
Product Theater Page 7
A Pathway to Advocacy Page 8
Got 10 Minutes? Page 10
Question of the Month Page 11
‘
S
haring Your Diabetes’ can be done in many different ways. In this ‘Dr. Edelman’s Corner’ I’m going to describe two of them. I have been a physician specializing in diabetes at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center and University of California at San Diego since January of 1987 and, if you do the math, that is over 28 years! For most of that time I was seeing patients one-on-one, which had been the traditional approach since the beginning of time. Then, several years ago, I decided to try something different…Shared Medical Appointments or SMAs. An SMA for diabetes is when 5-10 people have their doctor visit all together in a small conference room over a 90-minute period. They share their medical issues, concerns, laboratory results, frustrations, personal struggles, successful ideas, and techniques with each other. Sharing their trials and
tribulations, as well as their successes, is tremendously helpful and the vast majority of participants absolutely love these shared medical appointments. I wish I could take credit for the idea but SMAs have been around for a long time, although not utilized as much as they should be. UCSD had the foresight Sharing Your Diabetes (continued on page 2)