No one was more surprised than Drew Rainwater when, at 25, he was diagnosed with diabetes. “I was young and healthy,” he says.
And even though he was employed at the time as a nurse, he says he ignored the signs and symptoms. “I was in a state of denial, and I blamed all the symptoms on something else. Sometimes health care professionals are the worst patients.”
Fortunately for Drew, when lab tests confirmed what he could no longer ignore — a HbA1c level of 8.3, when the goal is to be under 7.0 — he had two things going for him. “I made the decision that I was not going to let diabetes control me, but that I was going to control it,” he recalls. And second, he was under the care of a team of health care professionals at CareSouth Carolina’s Bennettsville office.
The team consists of a physician, a care manager, and a nurse, and patients get to know each member of the team well, says Drew’s physician, Scott Anders, MD. “The care managers do a lot of education, and the nurses are empowered through standing orders to order lab tests, refill medications, and even adjust insulin doses using our sliding scale. It’s made a big difference for patients in terms of continuity because when they aren’t seeing me they are seeing someone else they know and who knows them.”
Anders says the team concept allows each provider to do what they do best. “Our care managers meet with newly diagnosed patients for an hour and answer all their questions. Sometimes patients don’t open up quite as well with their doctors, and they won’t ask all the questions they have.” Care managers also hold classes for groups of diabetes patients.
Drew Rainwater, who now devotes himself to ministry full-time, says that the attention he’s received from the care team, as well as the classes he attended, have helped him fulfill his goal of controlling his disease. “They have helped me achieve an HbA1c level of 5.4. I’m a better and stronger person now than before I was diagnosed.”
06/01/2008
