How Family Experience Shapes Diabetes Management

How Family Experience Shapes Diabetes Management
Image by Steve Buissinne 

Watching another person experience diabetes influences type 2 diabetics’ self-management of blood sugar levels, according to a new study.

Throughout her 38-year nursing career, Laurel Despins has progressed from a bedside nurse and has worked in medical, surgical, and cardiac intensive care units. She noticed diabetes is rarely referred to as a primary cause of death in itself, yet the disease is a leading contributor to deaths involving heart disease, stroke, and cancer.

“In addition to being a contributor to cardiovascular-related deaths, diabetes can lead to a variety of negative health outcomes, such as kidney failure, arthritis, nerve issues, eye problems, and leg ulcers that can become infected,” says Despins, now an assistant professor and researcher in the University of Missouri Sinclair School of Nursing.

“Therefore, creating a plan to keep blood glucose levels from getting too high or too low will help those with diabetes better manage the disease and avoid those negative health complications down the road.”


 Get The Latest By Email

Weekly Magazine Daily Inspiration

To help adults with diabetes better manage their blood sugar levels, Despins interviewed people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes about their understanding of the disease and their approach toward self-management.

She found those who had previous life experiences watching a relative or neighbor manage diabetes influenced how they viewed diabetes management themselves.

“For example, one subject grew up watching his grandma inject insulin needles into her thigh all the time like it was no big deal, so naturally that person did not look at diabetes as something to be overly concerned about,” Despins says.

“On the other hand, another subject saw his neighbor with diabetic leg ulcers and swore that he never wanted that to happen to him, so he was very attentive to monitoring his blood sugar levels.”

To serve their patients, healthcare providers need to be aware of their financial resources, Despins says.

“People on a fixed income might not be able to routinely buy fresh produce instead of pasta, which can impact their blood glucose levels,” Despins says. “Given the tough circumstances some people with diabetes live in, health care providers need to do an assessment of what resources patients with diabetes have available so they optimize what they can do.”

Despins recommends that when health care providers collect initial quantitative data from patients such as weight, height, and age, they should also ask additional qualitative questions to get a better understanding of their knowledge of the disease.

“Asking questions like ‘What do you currently know about diabetes?’, ‘Do you know someone with diabetes?’ and ‘How do you think they did at self-managing it, and does this influence the way you view your self-management plan?’ will help the health care provider better understand the patient’s life experiences,” Despins says.

“My overall goal is to help people with diabetes better optimize their self-management, which will improve their health outcomes by avoiding negative complications in the long run.”

The study appears in the Journal of Clinical Nursing.

About the Authors

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality supported the work. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Source: University of Missouri

Original Study

books_health

AVAILABLE LANGUAGES

English Afrikaans Arabic Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Danish Dutch Filipino Finnish French German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Malay Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese

follow InnerSelf on

facebook icontwitter iconyoutube iconinstagram iconpintrest iconrss icon

 Get The Latest By Email

Weekly Magazine Daily Inspiration

Sunday, 23 May 2021 08:15

We sometimes need to use antibiotics to treat sick animals, but taking advantage of opportunities to reduce antibiotics use could benefit everyone

Monday, 24 May 2021 08:28

There are many valid theories to explain the global appeal of cats, including our obsession with watching videos of them online. In terms of cats’ pure entertainment value, however, our...

Friday, 28 July 2023 17:45

Respiratory viruses like influenza virus (flu), SARS-CoV-2 (which causes COVID) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) can make us sick by infecting our respiratory system, including the nose, upper...

Monday, 07 June 2021 08:07

Injury to the adult brain is all too common. A brain injury will often show up on brain scans as a well-defined area of damage. But often the changes to the brain extend far beyond the visible...

Tuesday, 20 April 2021 08:05

Wild bees are essential for sustaining the landscapes we love. A healthy community of wild pollinators ensures that most flowering plants have an A-team pollinator species and a reserve bench of...

Saturday, 15 May 2021 16:24

There exist several approaches to obtaining optimal health, all of them important, each of them acting in some way on all the aspects of our beings. I know that if a technique were valid for...

New Attitudes - New Possibilities

InnerSelf.comClimateImpactNews.com | InnerPower.net
MightyNatural.com | WholisticPolitics.com | InnerSelf Market
Copyright ©1985 - 2021 InnerSelf Publications. All Rights Reserved.