How everyone stands to benefit from a better understanding and use of patients’ perspectives and experiences of life with type 2 diabetes when designing and implementing treatment interventions. MIKKEL BROK-KRISTENSEN [s2If is_user_logged_in()]Download PDF[/s2If] The current approach to diabetes management is flawed. Providers’ use of the concepts of self-management and compliance disguises a system in which the perceptions and everyday life of the individual patient is discredited and disregarded. The result is the loss of both patients’ life quality and the wasting of billions of reimbursers’ dollars. This paper proposes a new direction in which providers move to change practice and acknowledge the equal importance of patients’ non-biomedical perception of diabetes in regards to cause, etiology and treatment initiatives. The paper argues that this change can potentially lead to a great improvement in the life expectancy and life quality of people with diabetes. It presents the outline of a practical model intended to assist...