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It was a bit mind blowing looking at a room full of professionals not socially distanced and not wearing masks. Well, that’s Denmark where Covid, for now, is way down and they’ve gone back to life as normal.

I would have loved to have been there but I’m still a bit gun-shy about travel so I was attending the Codiac (Copenhagen Diabetes Consensus) conference online from my home in New York. The two day event was around looking at the impact and value of including us, who they call “users,” in diabetes care, prevention and research. I was one of the two “patients” presenting the value I see in patient involvement.

Midday we were divided into breakout rooms. I chose to go into the one about how to improve patient involvement at the clinic. As I talked about the need to help people with diabetes feel safe throughout the visit with their HCP, another thought came to mind – the need to shift the status quo around diabetes from whether a person is succeeding or failing with their management, to no judgment.

We need to recognize that every day is a new day and the reality of living with diabetes is that even when you’re doing your best things may not go how you hope. Labels like success and failure don’t apply to the complexity of managing diabetes and they don’t help. All agreed so I made some small contribution even if I did have to get up at 5;30 in the morning to attend 😉