Nurse´s role in diabetes management: Challenges and facilitators

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore and discuss the role of nurses in diabetes man-agement and patient education as well as it sheds light on the facilitators and the possible barriers that are perceived by both nurse-patient to achieve the optimal self- management of diabetes. The genre of this study is a literature review in which three main electronic database search engines are used to retrieve the data. EBSCO, PubMed and ScienceDi-rect. The study is designed with inductive content analysis in which 10 articles were se-lected to be the relevant for conducting this study. Pender´s Health Promotion Model (1982-1996) and Orem´s Self-care Deficit Theory (1953-2001) are used as theoretical framework for this study. The study accentuated the role of nurses in diabetes manage-ment a being educators, evaluators, supporters, advocates and policy makers. In additions to the role of nurses in diabetes management, the literature review also outlined various approaches that can be used to by nurses to empower diabetic patients and to deliver ef-fective patient education such as continuous rehearsing about diabetes and about most updated knowledge. Also, the study revealed certain challenges that hamper patient edu-cation and self-care management due to the lack of skills and knowledge about diabetes. Overall, nurses play a significant role in providing diabetics with effective patient educa-tion about diabetes and empowering diabetics to carry out self-care.