Educating Nurses to Improve Patient Care

Placer County Medical Clinic is a rural county primary care clinic serving veterans and low-income patients with chronic illnesses, especially diabetes mellitus. As a CNL educator for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Management, this project focused on on best practice diabetes management education, training nurses to properly prep patients for their visits. The goal is to improve patients’ expressed satisfaction in their care from nurses through individualized care in this manner. Pre-assessment surveys were administered to all nursing staff to obtain baseline of their knowledge in diabetes care. The education training included information on diabetes care management and nurses’ roles in prepping patients for their clinic visits. Nurses completed a post assessment survey following the training. Informal surveys were offered to all diabetes patients. Post assessment surveys revealed increase in diabetes knowledge, progression from baseline. In addition, patient surveys demonstrated expressed agreement in diabetes education to be beneficial to improving their care from nurses. In conclusion, majority of patients surveyed expressed increased satisfaction in their care from nurses and found it beneficial for nursing staff to received up-to-date education on diabetes management. Improvements were seen in pre and post assessment scores from nurses, indicating effectiveness of the education training