Practice environment need
Diabetes is a debilitating chronic disease that needs life-long treatment. It significantly increases the risk of severe long-term complications, especially where poor management is involved. As the extent of diabetes is rising, it increasingly contributes to mortality and morbidity(Cho et al., 2018). This disease requires competent self-management, which can be developed from a thorough understanding of the disease process by an individual. Health education that involves self-care practices has been seen as a cost-effective approach to improve the life quality of diabetic patients. However, many are times they fail to follow them.
Diabetic patients with low knowledge level on self-care practices are at a high risk of decreased adherence to the medication regimens, physical activity and diet. This is likely to aggravate blood glucose levels and diabetes complications such as diabetic ketoacidosis, foot ulcers and coronary heart disease. No interventions and mechanisms are in place instituting information on self-management practices to be imparted on these patients. Impoverished skills of educating and lack of training opportunities for health providers on self-management practices have also resulted in knowledge inadequacies among diabetic patients which in turn causes poor self-care behaviours.
To enhance effective diabetes management, a strategy that improves health literacy could be a traverse intervention. It can help identify improvement areas, support and point-out patients’ self-care challenges. Additionally, it can assist to determine knowledge deficits and self-care practices inadequacies among diabetics (Garg, 2013), in turn, enabling clinicians in planning care that is specific to the patients’ needs. Individualized diabetes education can result in knowledge and appropriate self- management practices, hence better control of sugars in this population.
Professional nursing organization
I presume that being a member of the Nigerian Nurses Association Dallas/Fort Worth (NNADFW), I can be able to share ideas of improving health-care with experts who can help enrich it. It can allow me to inform and impact the community positively through health education. Besides, shared ideas can modify public policies pertinent to social and health-care issues.
Being a member of NNADFW will also allow me to network. In the process, I can identify a potential mentor/supervisor who can guide me in the development of my future scholarly project proposal. Consequently, it can attract project collaborators and help in the dissemination of findings.
References
Cho, N. H., Shaw, J. E., Karuranga, S., Huang, Y., da Rocha Fernandes, J. D., Ohlrogge, A. W., & Malanda, B. (2018). IDF Diabetes Atlas: Global estimates of diabetes prevalence for 2017 and projections for 2045. Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, 138, 271–281. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diabres.2018.02.023
Garg, R. (2013). Diabetes education & prevention. In Indian Journal of Medical Research (Vol. 138, Issue DEC, pp. 820–823). Wolters Kluwer — Medknow Publications. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3978965/