Give clients clear feeding plans to improve diabetes outcomes

This is the second part of a 2-article series with Martha Cline, DVM, DACVIM (Nutrition). While part 1 focused on how to use nutrition assessment to guide clinical diet selection, part 2 zeroes in on client education and practical feeding recommendations at diagnosis.

RELATED: Use nutrition assessment to guide diabetes care in dogs and cats

Editor’s note: This Q&A was drafted from an audio interview. The responses from Cline have been lightly edited for clarity and flow in a written format.

dvm360: What client-education strategies do you think about for diet adherence?

Cline: These clients often need you to spend some time talking with them, and sometimes [it means] leveraging our support staff as well. Our vet technicians and nurses, a lot of them are capable of counseling owners as well, especially when it comes to the management of these cases. Specifically, from a nutrition perspective, it’s important to be very specific with our feeding recommendations. This means doing the calculation, telling an owner how much, how many times they should be feeding the pet, and what to expect. [Have a plan] if a pet isn’t finishing their meals or if they aren’t eating.

Sometimes these owners really need you to be very specific with them, especially when it comes to the nutrition part, because we know we’re already being specific with them on the insulin and that medical management side. But again, it can be really overwhelming. I don’t want to hand an owner a bag of food and just say, ‘follow what’s on the back of the label.’ I really want to make sure that we’re tailoring those specific feeding recommendations to the pet and to the owner, to make sure that we can get good compliance.

dvm360: How do you account for the household and real-world feeding challenges?

Cline: It’s also really important to take into account the feeding management, because managing a diabetic dog or cat is a lot for an owner. It changes a lot of what happens daily in their household. So, we want to make sure we have a good idea of the environment and what the owner is able and capable of doing from a nutrition standpoint.

A good example would be a multi-pet or multi-cat household where we’re making specific recommendations for one cat; we really need to think about how to manage that household in a way that is actually going to be manageable from a feeding standpoint when we’re making such specific recommendations.

dvm360: What are common mistakes or missed opportunities you see in practice?

Cline: I don’t necessarily want to call it a mistake, but maybe a missed opportunity is, again, to be very specific and tailored with your feeding recommendation. It’s going to help alleviate some of the work the owner has to do in figuring it out themselves, especially when they already feel overwhelmed. And it’s going to be more tailored specifically to that animal compared to making a generic recommendation.

So, taking the time to do the calculation and giving an owner a specific recommendation for food, how much to feed, and frequency, is really, really helpful. I do see that that doesn’t always happen, and I think that’s a missed opportunity for us in terms of managing these cases.

dvm360: Any practical tips about treats and owner expectations?

Cline: Oh, and treat recommendations...we can’t forget that. You’re not going to be able to take treats away from everybody, but make sure that you’re accounting for them as well. Giving specific feeding recommendations and a specific medical recommendation has been shown to increase compliance in pet owners, so that’s another key thing.

dvm360: What resources or kits does Purina provide to clinics and how can they access them?

Cline: At Purina, we provide a bag of the Purina DM for cats, or a bag of EN FiberBalance for dogs, as part of the kit when they are diagnosed with diabetes. Some of the other resources that we have...if people look at the Purina Institute website, we have calculators for helping to calculate how much to feed, and that can be really helpful.

We have maintenance energy requirement calculators that people can access, again, on Purina Institute center square, that can be really helpful in figuring out how much they need to feed these pets throughout the day. There are some other resources on there related to diabetic management as well that people can access from a clinical standpoint. So in addition to providing the food, we also have some nice resources online to help people in terms of figuring out how much [to feed] and ways to help guide the pet owner.

dvm360: How can clinics enroll or sign up?

Cline: The website is usa.petdiabetesmonth.com. That’s where clinics can enroll. If they’re interested in participating, I would encourage them to visit that website for more information.

dvm360: If there’s one thing you want clinicians to remember about owner education, what is it?

Cline: Take the time to give them a specific feeding recommendation, and that includes food, feeding amounts, and frequency.