Dr David Cavan DM FRCP has been a Consultant Physician at the Bournemouth Diabetes and Endocrine Centre since 1996.  He has extensive experience in the treatment of diabetes, with particular interest in the management of type 1 diabetes with multiple daily injections and with pump therapy.  He believes that the cornerstone of diabetes treatment is patient education to facilitate active self-management.  To this end, he has been actively involved in the development of patient education programmes for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, including the successful BERTIE programme, whose format has been adopted by over 40 diabetes centres around the UK.  He has co-written an internet-based education programme for type 1 diabetes which is accessible free of charge (www.bdec-e-learning.com).  At national level, he has been Chair of the Education and Psychosocial Care Section of Diabetes UK and has participated in a number of working groups on patient education.  He is national spokesman for the Diabetes Education Network (www.diabetes-education.net), which supports diabetes teams across the UK in delivering high quality structured education programmes.  Dr Cavan also sees patients with diabetes-related problems, including hypertension, kidney disease and erectile dysfunction, as well as patients with pituitary disease, polycystic ovarian syndrome and testosterone deficiency.