Choose a chronic illness that could affect a patient in your nursing practice. Discuss three (3) ways you could promote the health of the patient and the family dealing with the specific illness.

 

Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas that is responsible for the conversion of blood sugar into the energy used by the body. The chronic disease, which often develops in people who lead sedentary lifestyles coupled with poor nutritional options, has clinical manifestations such as unexplained weight loss, polydipsia, wounds that do not heal, polyuria, and polyphagia among many others.

Some of the contributing factors for T2DM include, but not limited to, a sedentary lifestyle, obesity, genetics, gender, and age (American Diabetes Association, 2017; Gregg et al., 2018).

If not adequately managed and controlled, T2DM can lead to serious life-threatening complications such as stroke, heart attack, amputations, and blindness, among others. Additionally, unmanaged T2DM significantly lowers life expectancy as well as poor quality of life.

According to the American Diabetes Association (2017), the disease which places an extremely substantial economic burden on both the government and the patients affects more than one-third of the entire American population, with over ninety percent of those affected being ignorant regarding their conditions. The prevalence of the disease is so widespread that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) places T2DM as the seventh leading cause of death in the country (Gregg et al., 2018).

Health Promotion for T2DM

The primary goal for promoting health among the patients living with T2DM is to improve the quality of their lives by avoiding the life-threatening medical complications associated with the disease as well as preventing the development of the disease in the population that is considered to be at high risk.

There are several ways in which a nurse can conduct health promotion for T2DM patients. One of the ways is through health-focused patient education. It is crucial that the patients be made aware of the gravity of their conditions so that they are empowered to make the required lifestyle modifications that will promote their health and wellbeing.

Similarly, educating the entire population helps in reducing the risk factors that contribute to the development of the disease, thus preventive care (Kaakinen, Coehlo, Steele & Robinson, 2018).

Secondly, the nurse can organize for free medical camps that focus on screening for T2DM, thus early detection. Early detection of diabetes leads to early treatment, which means that the required patient outcome is easily obtained by preventing the disease from progressing to T2DM-related complications (Herman et al., 2015). Early screening also helps in reversing the condition in otherwise healthy people who are found to have pre-diabetes.

Another way in which the nurse can conduct health promotion is through patient monitoring after discharge to ensure medication compliance. The nurse can create a patient-caregiver relationship, which will enable them to keep tabs on the patients to ensure that they are managing their conditions according to the prescription that has been specifically tailored for them.

Patient monitoring ensures that diabetes does not progress to the related complications, which not only lowers their life expectancy and quality of life but also places a substantial financial burden on them (Reisi et al., 2016). Medication noncompliance also leads to drug resistance due to misuse meaning that the condition of the patient will no longer be able to respond to the same type or dosage of the medication prescribed.

References

• American Diabetes Association. (2017). 2. Classification and diagnosis of diabetes. Diabetes care, 40(Supplement 1), S11-S24.
• Gregg, E. W., Cheng, Y. J., Srinivasan, M., Lin, J., Geiss, L. S., Albright, A. L., & Imperatore, G. (2018). Trends in cause-specific mortality among adults with and without diagnosed diabetes in the USA an epidemiological analysis of linked national survey and vital statistics data. The Lancet, 391(10138), 2430-2440.