Challenges in Managing Elderly People With Diabetes Paper Example

Introduction

The medical field has some problems affecting all involved personnel. The main persons' in the medical area are the doctors and the nurses whose services are very critical for a sound, and a medical care system in the hospitals. The nurses do most work when it comes to caring for the sick in the hospital. They do the most hands-on work of washing critically ill patients, administering drugs to them among other operations. Diabetic patients require intensive care, and therefore the nurses face many challenges in meeting high-quality care needed (McDonald et al., 1999).

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Nursing Research & Care Article: Challenges in Managing Older Adults with Diabetes in Primary Care Settings in Norway

The main objectives of conducting the research about the challenges that face primary care of elderly patients with diabetes was to explore nursing assistants and nurses experiences while taking care of this patients mainly the challenges they face in accordance to the research hypothesis, nurses faces various challenges in providing efficient and effective care to elderly patients with diabetes. Interviews were the selected research design used during the collection of data. The interviews were conducted among health care professionals- 16: 12 and four nurses and nursing assistants respectively from nursing homes, five district nursing service, and one service unit. The research participants included in general nurses of female gender between age between 32-to- 59 and with clinical expertise ranged from 1.5-to-38 years of experience.

After data collection and analysis procedures, it was discovered that the selected participants lacked autonomy and confidence to care and manage elderly patients with diabetes in the setting of public care hence calling for home-based care services. Support, lack of information and professional cohesion were some of the challenges facing care of diabetes elderly patients.

In most cases, the ratio of the nurses to the patients is very low, and therefore they have to overwork to meet the healthcare needed. The elderly are physically weak, and consequently, the diabetic condition makes them weaker hence require more attention (Graue et al., 2013). Attending to such vulnerable people require a larger number of nurses to satisfy the need. Additionally, the nurses are poorly equipped with the state of the art equipment of performing simple processes and therefore delayed the administration of drugs, first aid and clinical methods like wound washing.

Another challenge in the administration of nursing care for elderly diabetic patients is a lack of current information on the diabetic conditions of the patients (Graue et al., 2013).. The latter is attributable to poor equipping and administrative procedures of passing information in the hospital. Besides, research has revealed that nurses enjoy very little support from other professionals like doctors due to the division of labor and poor cohesion in skilled labor delivery. Moreover, complex and challenging patient situations are very challenging to the nurses regardless of the experience because of a lack of confidence and autonomy

Care of Diabetes Elderly Patients - Related Journal Article

The nurses perceived and the actual level of diabetes mellitus knowledge: results of a cluster analysis is a journal article that primarily aims at exploring the relation between actual understanding of diabetes and nurses perceived. It covers mostly the self-care of elderly diabetes patients where nurses provide awareness and training on how to handle the disease which is essential to society. To maintain updated knowledge about diabetes illness, it is the responsibility of the nurses to educate updated and correct information to the patients (Chan & Zang, 2007).

References

Chan, M. F., & Zang, Y. L. (2007). Nurses' perceived and actual level of diabetes mellitus knowledge: results of a cluster analysis. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 16(7b), 234-242. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17584433

Graue, M., Dunning, T., Hausken, M. F., & Rokne, B. (2013). Challenges in managing older adults with diabetes in primary care settings in Norway. Scandinavian journal of primary health care, 31(4), 241-247. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3860301/

McDonald, P. E., Tilley, B. C., & Havstad, S. L. (1999). Nurses' perceptions: issues that arise in caring for patients with diabetes. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 30(2), 425-430.