How does Self-Management Programmes for Diabetic Adults Help Improve and Empower Awareness in Diabetes?

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LITERATURE REVIEW1

Diabetes and Self Management1

Secondary Research2

Literature Search3

Systematic Review3

Inclusion Criteria4

Critical Analysis of Articles6

References9

Appendix - A12

LITERATURE REVIEW

Diabetes and Self Management

Diabetes is a debilitating disease that can impact a person's health in numerous ways. In recent years, diabetes has grown into an epidemic scale in the United Kingdom (Atak, Gurkan, Kose, 2002, 66). The incidence of type II diabetes has greatly increased in nearly every age group of the population of the United Kingdom (Barker, 2010, 74). In 2007, the British Department of Health estimated that 23.6 million people in the United Kingdom had diabetes. This equals to 7.8% of the population. Of those people, 17.9 million were diagnosed and 5.7 million were considered undiagnosed (Brettle, Grant, Booth, 2004, 16). Complications from diabetes can include lipid abnormalities, hypertension, obesity, cardiovascular disease, lower limbs amputations, and stroke (Craig, Smyth, Mullally, 2002, 30).

Diabetes is an increasing problem in the United Kingdom, both in terms of its prevalence and its financial burden on the health care system. An estimated 23.6 million people in this county currently live with diabetes, and another 1.6 million are expected to develop it each year (NICE, 2008). The cost of diabetes is staggering, with direct and indirect costs totalling £131.6 billion every year (Shi, Ostwald, Wang, 2010, 398).

Diabetic self management care is focused on and integrated across the spectrum of the disease and its complications, the prevention of comorbid conditions, and the relevant aspects of the immune system. Self management's goals are to improve short-term and long-term health and/or economic outcomes among people with the disease” (www.diabetes.org.uk). Self management can generally be thought of as a program focused on discrete episodes of treatment for acute conditions related to the disease, and more focused on preventing acute conditions from rising in the first place (Ellis, 2010, 41). In this sense, self management can be thought of as tertiary prevention, oriented towards reducing the complications and improving the health of those already diagnosed with a chronic disease. Self management programmes have been growing at a rapid pace, with 52% of all health plans now offering some form of program for diabetics (Gallegos, Ovalle-Berúmen, Gomez-Meza, 2006, 344). Several counties are now integrating self management into their Medicaid programmes to rein in the high costs associated with chronic illness (Hinchliff, Norman, Schober, 2004, 14).

The proliferation of self management programmes is no doubt due to many studies that show they do in fact result in fewer adverse outcomes (Hogston, Marjoram, 2007, 96). However, not all programmes have been shown to be effective, and there is debate in both the medical community and the insurance/managed care community about the long term benefits of these programmes (Hek, Moule, 2006, 69).

Secondary Research

The nature of the adopted research design is based on secondary research. In secondary research, data are gathered from published materials, and other third party sources. Secondary research is often more subjective in nature as compared to quantitative design of research and utilises ...