Nurses indicate self-management techniques for diabetes

A recent symposium amongst American nurses has debated why diabetic prevention and self-management are not more effective, when the vast majority of diabetic cases are preventable.
The debate occurred at the “State of the Science on Nursing Best Practices for Diabetes Self-Management.” The symposium, sponsored by the American Journal of Nursing, had fifty participants. Not just nurses, the participants came from a wide variety of healthcare backgrounds. They aimed to identify barriers to self-management, and work out ways to overcome them.
The symposium identified six principal blocks to successful self-management. These were: problems with navigating health care system, lack of immediate self-care, limitations on time spent with healthcare professionals, undervalued patient education, not to mention complexity of education, and inadequate levels of patient health literacy. The participants then suggested solutions to each.