Introduction
Diabetes remains one of the major health concerns both at the federal and community level. Much work is done to change the state of affairs for the better with significant results. Still, because the problem lies at the cultural level and has to do with the people’s idea of their lifestyle, the healthcare professionals providing people with the medical help in their community need to take the role of the change agents and build up the new culture of quality lifestyle leading to better health outcomes. In my working practice, I face patients whose health status is significantly deprived and the quality of life reduced due to the problems associated with diabetes or prediabetes. In this paper, the teaching plan will be elaborated to help the community people affected by the diabetes problem improve their health status.
Theme Identification and the Rational for its Selection
To address the burning health issue of diabetes prevention in the local community, I have resolved to realize the series of educational lessons conducted voluntarily. The first lesson will be entitled “Preventing Diabetes when You are at Risk”. The rationale for the theme selection is the state of affairs with diabetes in the local community where I serve as a nurse. Electronic health records review in the practice where I am employed demonstrates the high prevalence of patients with diabetes or prediabetes. Community people survey has identified that people are not fully aware of the diabetes preventive strategy practices.
The solid body of evidence supports the conclusion that healthcare is the ‘health’ care and not the ‘sick’ care (Fayers & Machin, 2013). This thesis is the rationale behind the main objective of the planned lesson. Based on Fayers and Machin, (2013) findings, I am confident that educating people about the systemic action plan they can implement to improve their health status is an effective diabetes prevention measure. I am confident that changes on the cultural level are the most effective solution to the diabetes problem.
The Learners
The intended audience consists of learners of various backgrounds. These are the people of different ethnicity and cultural tradition. Their common feature is belonging to the low or under middle class. These social categories are especially affected by the problem of diabetes due to lifestyle peculiarities. They demonstrate the common set of unhealthy behaviors based on adherence to contemporary American lifestyle practices such as eating fast food and spending much time around the TV and computer.
These are also people with various educational backgrounds. Only the insignificant amount of people has the higher education, while others have professional education or no education at all. Very few have the medical background. For this reason, the goal of the lesson is to provide the material easy for comprehension and memorizing for common people having no specific medical knowledge (Huffman, Vaccaro, Exebio, Zarini, Katz, & Dixon, 2012). Another issue is that it is estimated that not all people in the intended audience are ready to comply with the offered prevention strategy. Therefore, sufficient amount of work is to be done to improve audience’s engagement and commitment to the theme of diabetes prevention.
The community people survey has identified the major problems and risk factors affecting their health condition. In particular, they do not have sufficient physical activity daily. Their eating habits are not healthy: they eat fast food and junk food daily, and have many high-fat and high-sugar meals in the daily diet. Due to the quite low income, they are not able to afford to consume enough vegetables and fruits. The majority of these people have the family history of diabetes. In addition, many of these people are considerably obese. Finally, the total majority of the intended audience does not have the full health insurance coverage and do not have the practice to visit the local clinic for the annual health screening.
The Educational Settings
The educational session will take place in the local church as a voluntary event. Therefore, everyone in the community will be free to visit. However, the event has its primary focus on the category of community people that are in the diabetes risk category along with their family members. The lesson intends to provide the theoretic and practical knowledge to the identified group with an objective to ensure better preparedness to the healthy lifestyle in this community population group (DeBoer, 2013).
The educational session will incorporate the information provided by CDC (2015) to help the audience understand the significance of the issue for their quality of life and health trajectory development. The lesson will summarize the health recommendations provided by CDC (2016) in the article entitled “Preventing Type 2 Diabetes When You’re On-the-Go”. The main lesson points will address
- the need to have sufficient physical activity;
- importance of the healthy eating habits;
- significance of regular clinic visits to control the blood test results and participate in the screening measures; and
- stick to the medications if they are ordered by the health specialist to manage the blood indicators (CDC, 2016).
Theoretical Basis for Teaching Approaches to Be Used
For teaching approach, the theoretic basis of the Health belief model and Change theory will implement. The Health belief model implicates that proper motivation is needed to inspire people to change their behavior (Barker, 2015). To alter their course of acting and lifestyle beliefs, people should understand how such changes affect their life quality and health status (Barker, 2015). The change theory is another theoretic framework that will work to provide the theoretic background for the project development. This theory views the process of positive health change as the three-step development. To make positive change in the health behavior, a person will need to unfreeze the former harmful stereotype, change it, and then freeze the new effective practice to make it the new quality habit (Barker, 2015). The change theory will help to organize the process of change in the identified category of patients suggesting the theoretic approach to the health improvement strategy.
Conclusion
In conclusion, diabetes continues to be the major preventable healthcare issue in the country and in the local community. Tremendous work has taken place to change the situation for the better with the significant results achieved. However, more work is still needed to make the positive change a part of people’s health culture. This paper addressed the problem of diabetes prevention in the community where I serve as a nursing professional. The elaborated educational plan aims at assisting the most vulnerable population categories in developing personal strategy for diabetes prevention and acquiring the proper attitude to the problem along with engagement and commitment.
References
Barker, A. M. (2015). Advanced practice nursing. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publisher
CDC (2015). 2014 National Diabetes Statistics Report. Web.
CDC (2016). Preventing Type 2 Diabetes When You’re On-the-Go. Web.
DeBoer, M. D. (2013). Obesity, systemic inflammation, and increased risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes among adolescents: A need for screening tools to target interventions. Nutrition, 29(2), 379-86.
Fayers, P., & Machin, D. (2013). Quality of life: the assessment, analysis and interpretation of patient-reported outcomes. Burlington, MA: John Wiley & Sons.
Huffman, F. G., Vaccaro, J. A., Exebio, J. C., Zarini, G. G., Katz, T., & Dixon, Z. (2012). Television watching, diet quality, and physical activity and diabetes among three ethnicities in the United States. Journal of Environmental and Public Health.