Incarcerated people with diabetes have many barriers to good health, including proper diet, exercise, medications, and self-care education. Maintaining good control is time-consuming, costly, and stressful, and diabetes emergency care is even more so. A better approach is to empower the patient on self-management through education on how to optimize the factors they can control. Empowerment can also benefit the patient in other aspects of their well-being.

Educational Objectives

• List barriers to optimal diabetes care unique to corrections
• Describe ways to apply patient empowerment in corrections
• Discuss potential results of patient empowerment for staff and patients