Diabetes Educator

Like any Educator, your job as Diabetes Educator is to teach. However, the subject you focus on is not math or English. Instead, you teach about the disease diabetes.

Diabetes Educators work with patients afflicted with this disease as well as those in danger of developing it to give advice on how to handle or prevent it. Most people in this position are Nurses or Doctors who have a specialization in diabetes education.

A day in this job can play out a few different ways. One position might have you throwing a health fair in a rural community, while another might have you explaining the basics of the disease to a newly diagnosed patient. Diabetes Educators can work in hospitals or clinics, and do everything from educating patients on how to control symptoms through diet and exercise to addressing fears and emotional issues that arise.

Many times, you work with entire families, especially in the case of sick kids. You explain to them what Caregivers can do to assist the patients, and how they themselves can help their loved ones.

Outside of hospitals, you focus on things like outreach, education, and prevention. You tend to travel often in this job. One day, you might stop by a school to talk with kids, while another, you might visit the homes of sick patients living in rural areas far from Doctors. This job requires good communication skills along with some serious cultural sensitivity, as diabetes appears more often in certain ethnic groups than others.