Diabetes educator Sheri Setser-Legg believes in being a partner in your care
Meet Sheri Setser-Legg, the Diabetes Education Services Coordinator at the UK Barnstable Brown Diabetes Center. She has been a registered dietitian for more than 20 years and a certified diabetes educator for over 15 years. She sees both children and adult patients with diabetes, including those who use insulin pumps and other pieces of equipment. We recently caught up with Setser-Legg for this week's edition of Making the Rounds.
When did you realize you wanted to be a dietitian?
I had a high school chemistry teacher that was fabulous. We did a section on food science, and I found that very fascinating. I planned to go into journalism, but after that, I came to my chemistry teacher and said what kinds of jobs are out there where you can do something with this. That’s a dietitian.
What can a patient expect from an appointment with you?
The thing I’ve always told our patients, particularly the ones where diabetes is a new diagnosis for them, is that I am your best friend. There are no dumb questions. We will go over everything together. We are here for the 800 questions you’re going to have over the next few weeks. I think patients, particularly with a new diagnosis, are terrified of the unknown and all the things they’ve heard that aren’t necessarily true. Yes, we’re here to go over what your medications are and how to test your blood sugar and how to eat, but we're also here to get you through that diagnosis and to make sure you’re 100 percent going to be OK.
What's the coolest part of your job?
The coolest part of my job are the people that I meet. I meet a patient every single day who has some really interesting story that may or may not have to do with their diabetes.
And I think I'm humbled every day at the things that people deal with and persevere through, and it makes me realize things for me are not bad compared to what some people deal with. People are amazing in terms of what they can accomplish.
Watch our interview with Sheri Setser-Legg to learn what she loves most about her work – and why patients love her, too.
