Educating Medical MD Employer Group on Diabetic Management - Essay Sample

Intorduction

Medical MD employer group has a diverse population of healthcare workers, and among them, there are some diabetic employees. The proposed program seeks to provide educational opportunities to the employer group, which is either diabetic or pre-diabetic. The aim is to enhance diabetic management among healthcare workers and to reduce co-morbidities associated with diabetes. The fast-paced environment in which medical health workers operate distracts them from observing healthy dietary practices. The provision of diabetes education programs are significant in the healthcare setting since it enhances the welfare of medical practitioners and their productivity in the provision of care.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Population and Setting

The community of interest for the study includes all healthcare workers in the medical institution. Precisely, the population considered for the PICOT question constitutes all members of staff in Medical MD. In this case, health professionals, MD ARNP doctors, medical assistants, and office staff are considered. Additionally, the population is quite diverse, considering the demographical characteristics of age, gender, ethnicity, race, religion, and physical ability. Regarding the age of the population, it ranges from 21 to 65 years. It is essential to address the need identified within this population, given that their health issues could affect their efficiency at work. Moreover, their working environment could prevent them from maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Intervention Overview

The proposed intervention is an interactive educational program using media, sessions 1-1, or in group settings. The main objective of this intervention is to motivate the members to keep track of their dietary plans, an aspect they might overlook considering their challenging working environment. Specifically, the program is designed to enhance the likelihood of members to adhere to meal schedules, carbohydrates intake, exercise, and overall management of their diabetic conditions. In the initial phase of the intervention, a questionnaire will be provided to participants to evaluate their knowledge of self-management and nutrition for diabetes type 2. From this insightful questionnaire, an effective education plan will be adapted to each participant's needs, which makes the chosen intervention method fit the target population and adequately address the identified need.

Comparison of Approaches

The comparison alternative is the Diabetes Health Plan program in which all the diabetic and pre-diabetic employer group members are enrolled. The program features a provision for the employer group to visit diabetes specialists at zero-rated copay. In this case, certain medications required to manage diabetes hypertension and high cholesterol are provided to the members at no cost. Besides, members can have lab work done A1C, kidney function tests, and eye retina exams once per year at no personal cost to motivate them to participate in the clinical assessments, which appears to be a convenient approach for the target population working in a demanding working environment. It could seem cheaper and less time-consuming as compared to the approach described in the previous section and address the identified need adequately.

This Diabetes Health Program alternative encourages the incorporation of more interprofessional care approaches by combining several aspects of diabetes management. First, it promotes diabetes diagnosis by physicians, who must also work with the medical laboratory specialist to perform tests. Secondly, once a positive diagnosis is confirmed, the pharmacists are required to provide adequate medication. Thirdly, dieticians, and exercise physiologists are also involved in the diabetes management process. However, the proposed intervention only focuses on imparting knowledge. Another aspect of the alternative is the suitability to the target population, given its time effectiveness, unlike the educational program, which is time-intensive. For this reason, most medical practitioners desire the alternative since they have very little time to spare. Overall, the alternative is critical to diabetes management, but an educational program is still necessary to promote its effectiveness.

Initial Outcome Draft

The intervention aims to provide diabetic information to the employer group to help them effectively manage their condition. From the objective of the intervention, one outcome of the study is the improvement in knowledge about diabetes for the population of interest. The aspects of education that can be measured for the study include the basic physiology of the body, development of diabetes, hypoglycemia, diets' recommendation, management of diabetes, and general principles in diabetes care. An increase in knowledge among the members of the education group would signify a positive impact of the intervention and illustrate its purpose.

Time Estimate

Data collection is expected to be carried out during the provision of the education program and beyond. For the above reason, the education program is scheduled to last for about three months. Therefore, the data collection can be expected to conclude after six months from the time the program is introduced. The time frame is realistic, as it is dictated by the data collection method, questionnaires, study variable, education, and its impacts on health. However, it could face such a potential challenge as the participants' reluctance to be actively engaged.

Literature Review

Current literature on the impacts of diabetes type 2 on patient's lives and its management focuses on at-risk populations within society. The research highlights the significance of diabetes management practices in relation to their cost and effectiveness. Notably, nutrition and lifestyle contribute to the development of diabetes in specific populations (Koller, Chin, & Conway, 2013). For older adults, the incidence of diabetes type 2 can be problematic given the advancement in age and existence of disabilities, among other comorbidities. Despite the presence of knowledge on the risk factors and medical technology used to diagnose the condition at its early stage, the incidence of diabetes continues to rise. As a result, there has been a steady increase in the treatment cost of diabetes in the USA characterized by substandard care, high rates of hospitalization, and an upsurge in complications caused by diabetes (Perez-Escamilla & Putnik, 2007). While the incidence of diabetes varies across demographic groups, the condition cuts across all populations, which validates the need identified for the project and supports the appropriateness to address it within the target population.

Several interventions have been undertaken to help in the management of diabetic patients, and preventative measures were taken against the development of the condition. Most of these interventions, however, are based on the risk factors and symptoms associated with the disease. For instance, some employers provide their employees with regular diabetic screening tests to help in the early diagnosis and prevention of diabetes (Moses, Mawby, & Phillips, 2013). When the onset of diabetes is identified early enough, its management is simple and cost-efficient to both the individual and the healthcare sector. The diagnostic procedure can either be a Fasting Plasma Glucose Test or an Oral Glucose Tolerance test (Mukwevho, 2010). These tests help classify the test subject as non-diabetic, prediabetes, or diabetic. In the USA, about 24 million people have diabetes, while another 57 million are prediabetes (Mukwevho, 2010). A more effective intervention, which complements early diagnosis, is needed to lower the burden of diabetes in society. The target setting is not an exception in this regard, as healthcare workers should be able to deliver quality healthcare to their patients.

The difference between acute and chronic illness is the level of self-care that the patient put towards their recovery and general wellbeing. Diabetes falls under the chronic illness classification, meaning the patient contributes a lot towards its management, unlike the physician or nurses. Specifically, the patient is responsible for their diet planning, physical exercise, medication, and health care utilization (Schmitt et al., 2013). Therefore, some of the intervention measures developed to help in the effective management of diabetes are based on enhancing the patients' adherence and commitment to addressing their condition. However, to some populations, the lack of adherence to diabetes management practices stems from a lack of knowledge about the disease pathophysiology and risk factors.

Improvement of knowledge among patient populations requires the development of an educative program that effectively conveys the significance of diabetes management. While the development of an educational program or curriculum can follow standard procedures, the learning outcomes are dependent on the developmental stage of the target audience (Saylor, 2014). Therefore, knowledge of the learning theories is critical in developing strategies for increasing diabetes knowledge among adults. Additionally, educational curriculums need to change according to the social development changes as influenced by technology and availability of information (Story et al., 2010). In this case, recent technological changes have created new avenues of teaching and learning, such as online courses. Therefore, teaching patients about diabetes can exploit information technology to develop online courses, where they can acquire knowledge on diabetes prevention and management. However, the educational programs need to be following evidence-based learning theories so that they are appropriate to the target population.

For nursing education programs, various regulatory procedures should be met before they can be approved for use. When the regulation requirements are not met, barriers to implementation are instituted, which impacts the achievement of the program's goals (Story et al., 2010). Therefore, the development of a diabetic education program for healthcare workers needs to be innovative to pass the regulatory requirements. Specifically, data collection for validation of the program could utilize Information Communication Technology to over the geographical barriers with respondents. This constitutes evidence-based teaching in nursing, which is a requirement by regulatory bodies, such as the AACN (Story et al., 2010). For this reason, the development of a nursing education program concerns not only incorporating new evidence in the course, but it also means that the courses are well designed, taught, and evaluated. Failure to incorporate evidence-based teaching in nursing can result in ineffective curricula, which can even be detrimental to the achievement of learning outcomes.

Therefore, one of the most significant aspects of the development of a nursing educational program is evaluating the effectiveness of the intervention. This process must be incorporated in the planning phase by identifying the objectives of the program and how success is measured (Lubejko, 2016). Consequently, an evaluation of the program indicates the progress and areas of improvement. In this case, some of the standards that could be incorporated in the assessment of the diabetic education program include ways to improve care, lifestyle management, diabetes prevention, and diagnosis, assessment of comorbidities, risk factors and associated symptoms, prevalence rates, and treatment options (ADA, 2019). Once these standards are incorporated into the program, its outcomes can then be assessed (Oermann, 2013). The goal is to enhance management and prevention efforts by prediabetes and diabetic healthcare workers....