Free one-hour continuing education (CE) lecture for healthcare providers entitled Leveraging Health Literacy and Patient Preferences to Reduce Hypoglycemic Events in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes - Drug Information Update

CDERLearn > Continuing Education Courses

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) Safe Use Initiative continues to offer a free one-hour continuing education (CE) lecture for healthcare providers entitled Leveraging Health Literacy and Patient Preferences to Reduce Hypoglycemic Events in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes, which is focused on preventing hypoglycemic events in patients with type 2 diabetes. The CE lecture was posted on CDERLearn November 1, 2017 and will be available through October 31, 2020.  With hypoglycemia being the second most common adverse drug event for emergency department visits, it is critical that healthcare providers be aware of the risk factors, such as low health literacy and numeracy of patients, cognitive decline, and food insecurity, and be knowledgeable of how to prevent them from occurring. 

The course learning objectives are as follows:

• Describe the prevalence of hypoglycemic events among patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus and risk factors leading to an event.
• Introduce methods of assessing health literacy and numeracy of patients and caregivers.
• Review effective ways to incorporate patient preferences into care plans and differentiate A1C target values for individuals.
• List the action steps to reduce the likelihood of a hypoglycemic event for a high-risk patient.

The course introduces and provides healthcare providers with printable tools that they can use with their patients.  It was developed by a working group and led by FDA/Professional Affairs and Stakeholder Engagement/Safe Use Initiative team. The working group consisted of a multidisciplinary team of stakeholders such as physicians, pharmacists, nurses, registered dietitian nutritionists and certified diabetes educators. The working group was formed from a larger working group of the National Action Plan for Adverse Drug Event Prevention, Diabetes Agents Federal Interagency Workgroup.

Working group participants consisted of representatives from the following agencies:

• U.S. Food and Drug Administration, CDER Professional Affairs and Stakeholder Engagement,  Safe Use Initiative,
• Indian Health Service, 
• Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Division of Health Care Quality, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion and
• U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

The CE lecture should take approximately one hour from start to finish, and upon completion, participants are eligible to earn 1 hour of CE credit