Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
doing the teaching. A commonality with health education content is
that the health professional often provides too much detail
regarding pathophysiology and too little information in the daily
management of diabetes (Tripp-Reimer, Choi, Kelley, and Enslein,
(2001). It is important for the nurse to access the patient’s beliefs
and current practices with their diabetes, and use that information
as a foundation on which to build their diabetes regimen.
Diabetes research changed from evaluating achievement of
multiple outcomes such as weight loss, glucose control, and regular
exercise, to increased education. It became evident from the
alarming increase in complication rates that improving a person’s
knowledge did not necessarily lead to behavioral changes towards
effectively managing the disease (Bradley, 1995; Brown, 1992). In
a meta-analysis of the literature by Brown (1992), it was
determined that utilizing diverse educational strategies in teaching
self-management, produced the greatest effect on knowledge level,
but not on self-management outcomes such as: injection skills,
glucose control, and weight loss. Brown’s (1992) meta-analysis of
research into diabetes patient education, described that glycemic
control was shown to be more influenced by the person’s behavior.
In a randomized control study of patient empowerment,
Anderson, et al.,(1995) reported that health care providers need to
identify and isolate specific behaviors which are thought to
contribute to glycemic control and move from the focus on cognitive
outcomes to behavior outcomes. There is a need to construct and
test models which represent holistic approaches to diabetes and this
may generate improved outcomes for the disease.
Method: The Self-Care Inventory (SCI) was specifically designed
for evaluation of the diabetic client’s perceptions of adherence to
self-care. It is a 14-item self-report measure developed by
Weinger,et.al. (2005) and colleagues in 1988 (revised, 1992) which
categorizes the daily regimen tasks the client performs to manage
diabetes.
The SCR-R was administered to 12 participants, 65 years of age or
older, male and female, African-American and Caucasian, diabetic,
homebound, rural, living alone with multiple health problems.
Data: The statistical program for Social Science Software (SPSS)
was used to analyze the data. Descriptive statistics, frequency
tables, and percentages provided limited findings due to the small
sample size (N=12). Correlations based on this sample yielded, in
most cases, asymmetric distributions.
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