Introduction: Health science education can be effective and of high quality in case it is delivered as up-to-date and appropriate training methods. Applying the novel and efficient teaching methods for the health personnel will improve their training and executional role. With this background in mind, this study aimed to determine the educational efficacy of Team Member Teaching Design (TMTD), as a teaching model, on the knowledge of health personnel about diabetes.

Materials and Methods: This quasi-experimental study involving the two groups of test and control was performed on the health personnel of health houses in Birjand, South Khorasan, Iran. The 24 participants were selected using simple random sampling method. The experiment group received trainings regarding diabetes care based on the TMTD model and the individuals in control group were trained through the routine method of the health institute. The data collection tools included two researcher-made questionnaires for gathering the demographic data, as well as evaluating the knowledge of diabetes used for pre-test, post-test, and knowledge assessment. Items concerning diabetes prevention and care were developed according to the booklet of “National Program for Diabetes Control and Care”. All the obtained data were analyzed using SPSS version 20 by parametric tests of independent t-test, paired t-test, and repeated measures analysis of variance. For all the tests, P < 0.05 was considered as significant.

Results: The findings of this study indicated that there was no significant difference between the two groups of control and intervention regarding the mean scores of (P=0.668). On the other hand, the mean scores of diabetes knowledge in the two groups of intervention (20.90±0.831) and control (15.66±2.42) were significantly different (P<0.001). Therefore, a significant improvement was observed in the mean scores of diabetes knowledge in health personnel participating in the test group.

Conclusion: According to the results of present study, the TMTD model might be more efficient in enhancing the knowledge of health workers about diabetes, compared to the routine training method. Furthermore, the learners that received this training model could remember the contents better than the individuals of the control group.