What Is a Certified Diabetes Educator?

I wanted to share what a Certified Diabetes Educator is and what we do.

Video Transcription:

Hi! I’m Elizabeth Hanawalt, and I’ve had the question of what a CDE is. Well, CDE stands for Certified Diabetes Educator. Now I am a dietician with a specialty of CDE. CDE’s basically are made up of Dieticians like me, nurses, and some pharmacists.

What that means is that each one of us have had to go and get four year degrees, internships, maybe fellowships for the nurses, and then after that you take whatever board you know your RN, or pharmacy or dietician, you take the board test and then you have to have, at least for us, 2,000 hours working with diabetics, and then after that you give your application and then they approve it and then you take another board.

So those boards, at least for me, were not easy. I’m not a test taker, but I’ve been diabetic all my life and most of the time I know what to do, so after you get all of that then your job is basically in diabetes education. So, diabetes education basically includes diet, medications, life habits and that makes up a whole lot of it.

So if you’ve got that specialty, that speciality that CDE behind your name then you can teach diabetics. Now, some insurance companies require it. You can’t just be a nurse, or a pharmacist, or a dietitian, and then do the education and get it paid for, for a lot of insurances if you’re not specializing with CDE. So I hope that kinda, I hope that answers a whole lot of questions. Here again, I’ve got a masters, and I’ve got a four year degree, and then I have my CDE, so that’s all the alphabet soup behind my name.

Have you worked with a Registered Dietitian that is also a CDE? I'd love to hear!