According to Tami Ross, the current
president of the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE),
writing a comment to a recent blog in Diabetes Mine - “Second,
contrary to the assertions raised, membership in AADE is not
shrinking. In fact, membership has grown by more than 20 percent in
the past 4 years.” If this is true then the
membership numbers should have changed in the last four years, but
unless there is a lot of secrecy behind this, their information
published first on their home page and now in their fact sheet shows
they have not had a membership increase in at least the last three
years. The AADE Fact Sheet states, “With more than 13,000
members, AADE advocates on behalf of diabetes educators and the
patients they serve.” To see this you need to download it with
a PDF compatible reader and currently is the first item under the tab ABOUT US.
A 20% increase should have meant they
had a membership increase by at least 2,600 new members. In any
calculation, this means 13,000 plus 2,600 equals 15,600 members.
This means somewhere in their calculations, growth has been stagnant,
or the numbers had been inflated in the past. Why would they claim a
20% growth and not reflect this in their own membership numbers?
Then Tami Ross states, “First,
to be clear, as it appears there may be misunderstanding on Diabetes
Mine’s part, AADE is not a patient advocacy organization. As
AADE’s name reflects, we are a professional membership organization
for diabetes educators – an organization whose objective and
mission is to support the needs of diabetes educators.”
Their own fact sheet must be in need of revision then as in
the above italicized statement in the last sentence of the first
paragraph clearly states the “AADE advocates on behalf of
diabetes educators and the patients they serve.” If we are to
believe Ms. Ross then the only patients they serve are those that are
educators. Sorry Ms. Ross, you can't have it both ways. Please
correct your site's Fact Sheet if you do not agree.
This would also explain why the AADE
has published nothing about the National Standards that they worked
on with the American Diabetes Association (ADA) – the officers of
the AADE know they can't live up to them. I have stated this before
and I have even more reason to believe this now – Those at the
headquarters (ivory towers) are not aware of what is happening in the
trenches where mantras, mandates, and platitudes are the rule of the
way business is accomplished. I have met certified diabetes
educators that do not know what the word assessment means, except
that they teach to the lowest common denominator and teach very
little.
The AADE Fact Sheet also includes this
statement, “Our mission is to drive
practice to promote healthy living through self-management of
diabetes and related chronic conditions.” From
experience, I cannot agree, as I have found very little
self-management of diabetes taught. I have experienced only mandates
and mantras. Fortunately, I was able to use the internet and discern
for myself how to self-manage my diabetes. And being on insulin as a
person with type 2 diabetes, I was fortunate that the diabetes clinic
became available to me and has an endocrinologist and nurse
practitioners on staff.
The nurse practitioner that I was
seeing confirmed my own self-education and kept encouraging me to
learn. As a result, I have not needed to listen to any additional
mantras and mandates from certified diabetes educators.
If professional organizations wish to
have strictly internal documents, so be it. Then they need to become
thick skinned when slammed for what they do make public. We need
transparency, not whining when they are criticized for something that
is public. We do realize that most professional organizations are
for the preservation of the profession and not directed at the
patients. But when whining and complaining become the way of doing
business, we must wonder if the organization is worth the money.
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