
Sign up for a new account.
And get access to
The latest T1D content
Research that matters
Our daily questions
Sign up by entering your info below.
Reset Your Password
Don't worry.
We will email you instructions to reset your
password.
Background/Objective: Psychosocial factors play an important role in the care and management of type 1 diabetes (T1D) in children and adolescents. Youth with T1D who experience general and diabetes-specific psychosocial distress are more likely to experience difficulties with self-management and have suboptimal glycemic control, which can contribute to recurrent diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) and diabetes-related complications. We aimed to decrease DKA events to <5% in our T1D population through multiple, ongoing PDSA cycles geared toward improving psychosocial care.
Methods: Data regarding medical outcomes such as DKA events were extracted from the EMR database. PDSA cycles to achieve our aim included (a) creation of an extra-care cohort of patients at high risk for recurrent DKA events, with a dedicated social worker for this cohort; (b) increasing patient access to dedicated psychologists with diabetes-specific expertise; (c) initiating yearly PHQ-9A depression screenings; (d) development of a diabetes specific psychosocial assessment tool to identify and address barriers to diabetes care; and (e) development of a risk score to identify patients at high risk for DKA.
Results: The overall DKA percentage reduced from 9.5% (baseline) in 2015 to 6.02% in 2020.