Southern Maryland Hospital Center - Diabetes Treatment - Diabetes Healthcare and Treatment Centers in MD

Southern Maryland Hospital Center - Diabetes Treatment
7503 Surratts Road (on Rt.5)
Clinton, Maryland 20735

TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR BLOOD SUGAR LEVELS.

More than 250,000 people in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area have diabetes. The most important thing you can do, whether you have just been diagnosed or are a diabetes veteran, is to learn how to control your diabetes. Good management can add quality years to your life.

The Diabetes Self-Management Program is a new, comprehensive service offered at Southern Maryland Hospital Center that focuses on the intensive management of type 1 or type 2 diabetes. The Program adheres to the National Standards for Diabetes Education established by the American Diabetes Association.

Here, you’ll learn the essentials of individualized medication and blood glucose monitoring, and how to adjust medications, food and physical activities based on those results. You’ll learn to count carbohydrates as a strategy to match food and insulin and help meet your treatment goals. Along the way, our health care team will provide ongoing emotional and psychological support as well as expert medical care and treatment.

Self-Management• Benefits to Providers

Self-Management

Diabetes management includes achieving near-normal glycemic control in order to prevent diabetic complications. Within the last 10 years, there have been numerous medications developed for better diabetes control. Yet controlled diet and exercise are still important, basic ways to treat the disease.

Technical advances are now available to manage diabetes at all levels, from self-monitoring of blood glucose and measurement of glycated hemoglobin, to use of pure insulin preparations, to the availability of smaller, technically advanced insulin pumps.

SMHC’s program provides assessments and education by a certified diabetic educator and a dietician. Additionally, the program offers personalized education and training for participants and families, ongoing individual and group education, and follow-up with the participants and their primary physicians.

Our goal is to help the participant achieve both control over their disease and a feeling of physical and emotional well-being, while lowering the risks of chronic complications.

Benefits to Providers

Health Care Providers Benefit from Diabetes Self-Management

The Diabetes Self-Management Program provides education and support to patients, progress reports to physicians, and communication between the two. We offer a friendly staff, pleasant environment, and state-of-the-art approach to the management of diabetes, and help participants improve their quality of life.

Typical patients are otherwise healthy adults with either type 1 or type 2 diabetes. The program also provides special assistance to pregnant women with diabetes, selected adolescents and older children, and patients who have had kidney transplantation for diabetic nephropathy. All are offered individual assessment along with individual counseling and group education.

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