A Challenge to nurses: barriers for diabetic educators

Diabetes education is a crucial part of understanding the basic steps to achieving success in the management of diabetes mellitus. A major responsibility of the nurse is to help patients self-manage their disease. Inpatient admissions present the opportunity to assess the patient???s level of knowledge and need for treatment adjustments. However, nurses frequently have many barriers in the busy hospital environment that can hinder effective diabetic teaching. The purpose of this study was to investigate the various barriers to teaching that nurses encounter while performing diabetic education in the hospital setting. This was a descriptive, qualitative study that used audio taped interviews and open-ended questions to collect data. The four participants were nurses working on inpatient floors in different hospitals. All interviews were performed in a semi-structured manner.\ud In this study the nurses had very strong opinions on what is needed to be successful when performing diabetic education. Five major barriers emerged affecting a nurse???s ability to successfully perform diabetic education: access to resources, timing, environment, communication and the educational process.\ud Implications from findings include: the need for printed material, continuing education for the nursing staff, the availability of a translator, adequate staffing, a noise reduction program, the availability of a diabetic educator and more time at the bedside to perform teaching. Future research would be beneficial when performed on a larger scale on different units of various hospitals to explore what best practices are occurring and the effects these practices have on nurses and their patients.CSU, Chic