Patient Services: Diabetes in Pregnancy Program

The Diabetes in Pregnancy Program offers a unique comprehensive multidisciplinary approach to the management of patients who have diabetes during pregnancy. It is the only program providing this multidisciplinary approach (combining diabetes, nutrition and prenatal obstetrical care) in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina.

This program currently has approximately 250 active patients with diabetes of varying severity who are either co-managed with referring physicians or receiving complete obstetrical and diabetes care. Services provided include preconception counseling and management, comprehensive gestational diabetes consultation and management, comprehensive diabetes education, and nutritional and exercise counseling.

The program employs four certified diabetes educators (CDE), a perinatal nutritionist with extensive experience in the management of patients with diabetes, and highly trained support staff. Three of the four CDEs are also perinatal RNs.

Services include:

• Preconception counseling and management for women with diabetes who contemplate pregnancy and want a healthy perinatal outcome
• Group educational sessions (usually limited to four patients at a time) as well as individual teaching offered to women diagnosed with gestational diabetes
• Nutritional counseling by a professional perinatal dietitian targeting the special needs of women with diabetes
• Exercise counseling for the pregnant woman with diabetes
• Comprehensive diabetes education provided by certified diabetes’ educators who are also perinatal nurses. Educational materials include information on the risks to fetus and mother, self-blood glucose monitoring methods, management of hypoglycemia, self-injection and insulin administration techniques, initiation and management of insulin pump therapy
• Access to sophisticated technology for prenatal diagnosis and antepartum fetal management. These include:
  • genetic counseling
  • fetal ultrasounds (to assess fetal development and growth)
  • fetal echocardiograms (to assess the fetal heart)
  • antepartum fetal heart rate testing (to assess fetal heart rate and well-being antepartum)
• Around-the-clock clinical support by perinatal RNs who are also Certified Diabetes Educator (CDE); a hotline for patient access to CDE support is available 24 hours/day
• Careful monitoring of pre-gestational diabetes during the postpartum period until the patient returns to, or is referred to, an endocrinologist or primary care physician
• Active database of patients with diabetes managed during pregnancy; perinatal outcome data has been collected for more than four years

Top