Empowerment of patients with type 2 diabetes: current perspectives.

Patient empowerment is a continuous process in which knowledge, motivation, and capacity to take control of their disease are built within a person. This concept is not always well understood and applied. This review describes the strategies to induce empowerment in patients with diabetes. In addition, the most common scales used to evaluate empowerment in diabetes is described. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the empowerment-based interventions for improving metabolic control and diabetes knowledge are described. Finally, we discuss opportunities for empowerment implementation in clinical practice and current needs on research that can be translated into public policies.