Table 7.

Respondent quotations related to peer-based and autonomous diabetes education

Quote number	Quotation
3.1 The value of peer-based learning
23	“I learn things from other people with diabetes all the time. All the time.” [MOM: female, age 33, T1D duration 13 years]
24	“It’s comforting to realize that other people are going through the same thing that you are, which you don’t get through a doctor. The doctor never says ‘I have another patient going through a similar experience’. But that’s a help!” [RAS: female, age 30, T1D duration 12 years]
25	“I found other diabetics have been the easiest people to talk to cause you hear some things from the medical professions where I have just gone ‘Nuh! Surely there is a way around that one’. And having other diabetics around has helped amazingly.” [DOS: female, age 32, T1D duration 25 years]
26	“Stress impacts on my BSL but I was never warned that it would. It is all trial and error which is not a good system.” [SAB: female, age 24, T1D duration 18 years]
27	“(Name of chat room): Every so often if I have a question and I want some advice then I will look it up. For example, when I went traveling by myself I looked it up and saw what everyone else had given about what to carry on the plane: all sorts of different bits and pieces. It is good to be able to find information from other people who are living with diabetes and have had similar experiences as well.” [RAP: female, age 20, T1D duration 3 years]
28	“(In diabetes education) there is still very much this didactic direction of ‘this is what you can and can’t do’. I find people with diabetes act that way as well. So participating in a chat room? No thanks I’d rather just go my own way.” [AMM: female, age 33, T1D duration 25 years]
29	“No I’d be a bit skeptical going on to diabetes forums because you don’t know if the information is genuine.” [KRS: female, age 33, T1D duration 6 years]
3.2 Taboo subjects in clinician led education
30	“I have had diabetes for 20 years… You gradually work out what works for you. For example when I’m menstruating I have to drop my long acting insulin. Things like that I had to work out for myself. I wasn’t ever educated on how menstruation impacts on your BSLs”. [AMM: female, age 33, T1D duration 25 years]
31	“I have a friend and we talk between us: like after alcohol I always crash and I can eat five times as much without doing insulin. I talk to her about that stuff and she says ‘Yeah I’m like that’. So we see what is normal by comparing what happens to us.” [MAP: female, age 24, T1D duration 2 years]
32	“I took party drugs in my twenties and the only way I knew how to manage my diabetes was by asking other people with diabetes. My diabetic friends figured out what sort of effect that it would have on our blood sugars and so I would have a basic idea about how to manage at a party that way.” [DOS: female, age 32, T1DM duration 25 years]
3.3 Diabetes consumer organization led learning
33	“I’ve taken days off work to attend these meetings but you can’t keep doing that.” [RAS: female, age 30, T1DM duration 12 years]
34	“I get invites (from diabetes support organizations) about sessions that I think would be useful for me to attend but they are run at a time that I can never attend. Maybe the flexibility needed isn’t to run them at another time but to make them available via technology. The session doesn’t have to change schedule but just let me access it.” [CHS: male, age 32, T1DM duration 9 years]
35	“Why couldn’t they just put it on You-tube for people to download it.” [RAS: female, age 30, T1DM duration 12 years]

BSLs blood sugar levels, T1D type 1 diabetes