Coming out of a software background, what always strikes me about doctors is their inability to debug. They can follow a flowchart, which is how their practice guidelines are arranged, and they have memorized a lot of factoids, but they don't really understand the way you approach diagnosing something that isn't already in a clearly marked box on a flowchart. And as you all know, they never ask you how anything they prescribed worked for you. They just prescribe it and forget about it unless you call up and tell them you are covered with spots or vomiting.
However, getting back to engineering as it relates to people with diabetes, I think people either are born thinking analytically, and having a knack for using math to solve problems or they aren't. And the people who don't have that knack, in my experience, though they can be exceptionally bright and creative, can not be taught to think the way you have to think to use numbers to help you understand things. It isn't just that they had bad math teachers in high school or math phobias. It's some kind of missing part of the brain. Things that are completely obvious to someone who thinks analytically never make sense to someone who doesn't have those skills. If you live with someone who has been using a PC for 20 years and still is afraid to copy files from one directory to another, or who reboots their computer every time they get an error message from their browser, you know what I mean.
So I have accepted that diabetes is a condition that really penalizes people who aren't good at thinking analytically and mathematically. Those of us who can think that way are very lucky. But after many attempts to teach the way I think to people who are visual and don't have that mathematical brain structure, I've accepted that it goes beyond people not trying. These people are probably trying much harder than I am. They just don't have the brain structures to do it.
More importantly, it isn't a matter of "personal responsibility." People who don't know they don't know this stuff also are unaware when they are doing things that a person who understands math wouldn't do.
I have a different kind of deficit--I can't remember faces. At all. So I know what it is like to not know that I don't know something, because I will walk right past someone I have had many conversations with with no idea that I know them if I meet them out of context. So I suspect people must have some kind of similar math deficit where the places where my mind starts working things out, they just don't see anything to be worked out.