Diabetes And Cardiovascular Disease: Educating Patients On Their Risks

“In the practice of medicine we have a duty to be persuasive and teach parents what we think is the best thing to do.” - Dr. Don Saunders

While diabetes increases the risk for cardiovascular disease, it doesn’t mean that people have to accept a dose of bad news lying down. In fact, getting up and maintaining regular physical activity is one way to get a handle on a number of risk factors that are within an individual’s control. So is cutting back on the heaping platefuls of fried chicken that have been consumed for years, and making a decision to quit lighting up those Marlboros once and for all.

“There are risk factors for cardiovascular disease that one can do something about, and that’s where the focus needs to be,” said Dr. Don Saunders, Professor Emeritus, Department of Internal Medicine. “Yet you’re dealing with human nature. When you ask patients to change their lifestyle and change it forever, that can be a difficult thing to do,” he said.

Over the course of an almost 40-year career, Dr. Saunders took the job of patient education seriously. “In the practice of medicine we have a duty to be persuasive and teach patients what we think is the best thing to do,” he said. He added, “That doesn’t mean the physician has to do all the education, but to take the lead.” He commends the wealth of resources that are available nowadays for patients with diabetes. “There are patient educators of many types that are superb. Some people do better when they go to a class where they can relate to other patients. To others written material is helpful, although people shouldn’t just be handed a pamphlet.”

Sold on the value of patient education, Dr. Saunders referred to the steady decline in the rate of deaths from heart disease that has been taking place in the United States since the 1960s. While he explains that this can be attributed partially to advances in interventions like bypass surgery and angioplasty, he also acknowledges the work done by numerous health organizations in identifying risk factors and making people aware of them. “It does show that you can accomplish something if you really work at it,” he said.

Over the last four decades Dr. Saunders found that working with patients who have diabetes to help them avoid cardiac complications could be a complex process. “The practice of medicine is not just fixing people like an auto mechanic. It’s working with human beings and trying to bring them on board so that they understand,” he said.

Reprinted from Connections newsletter, September 2003

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