Free Essay: Diabetes Mellitus in African American Women

Compared with Caucasians, African American women suffer from Diabetes mellitus and bear the inconsistent burden of its complications. The types of diabetes mellitus that are common include gestational diabetes, and type 1and type 2 diabetes (American Diabetes Association, 2015). Type 2 Diabetes, which affects the African American women, is a lifetime and chronic condition that changes the way an individual's body processes blood sugar. Health disparities in Diabetes care can be conceptualised as the variances in medical care received as well as the quality of diabetes self-management. African American women with diabetes disorder experience more difficulties in diabetic self-management than Caucasians (Mozaffarain et al., 2016). The reason for this differences is that African American women frequently present cultural beliefs about their medical care and low literacy which interfere with the diabetes self-management strategies. This makes health promotion strategies put in place not efficient enough to change healthcare outcome. The review will scrutinise the health issues that are related to African American Women with diabetes mellitus. Innovative health promotion strategies that are targeted to bring change in healthcare outcomes include policies such as the creation of a positive relationship between African American women with diabetes and a nurse, training the patients and relatives, and supporting diabetes patients to be physically active.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Prevalence of Diabetes

Diabetes prevalence is reported to be higher in African American women than in Caucasians. It is also evident that many African American women have diabetes at their old age (Yuen &Wand, 2015). As such, the mechanism for the higher occurrence of this condition amongst the African American women and poorer diagnosis remain indefinite in the United States. For instance, African American women with diabetes disorder often develop some complications, which in turn causes disability and higher mortality (Yu et al., 2015). Health promotion strategies are vital to recognize whether the Africa American women with diabetes are responsible and in control of self-management of the disease (Lewis, 2015). It is because the disorder is strongly related to the patient's behavioural patterns, socio-economic changes as well as unhealthy lifestyle. The outcomes from different research that was carried out show that members of racial and cultural minority groups in the United States, together with the African American women, suffer mysteriously from type two diabetes. It is evident that diabetes signs may be more common in African American women than Caucasians. Though the reasons for this racial disparity in diabetes popularity are not clear, socioeconomic, behavioural, and physiological contributors have been proposed.

Health Promotion Strategies

Health promotion strategies such as the creation of a positive relationship between African American women with diabetes and a nurse, training the patients and relatives and supporting diabetes patients to be physically active plays a vital role in diabetic management mainly when the occurrence of the disorder is increasing in African American women in the United States. For this reason, nurses are identified to be at the forefront in health promotion (Yanek et al., 2016). Some of the ways of health promotion strategies include supporting patients to be active physically, providing education to patients with diabetes and relatives about the health and the disease. For this reason, there is the necessity of integrating health promotion strategies in training (A-tjak et al., 2015). Although the nurses consider health promotion as an essential part of nursing, they also play a significant role in health promotion for African American women with diabetes mellitus (Hunter et al., 2017). The nurses had various notions about how health was promoted in the United States. Some nurses considered it to be very crucial for all African American women with diabetes mellitus disorder whereas other nurses destined that the health promotion depended on the patients' present health status.

Creation of a Positive Relationship

The nurses are usually closer to the diabetes mellitus patients than the physicians. The nurses spend most of their times in hospitals together with the patients. Therefore, the nurse has a probability of promoting health through this close relationship with the patients (Eldredge et al., 2016). This relationship where the nurses encourage health as an approach at the patient meeting, facilitating communication as well as connecting with the patient is considered to be positive. In the United States, nurse practitioners are faced with hitches in creating a positive relationship with African American women with diabetes mellitus because of the physical or mental health conditions of the patients. The psychological or physical health conditions of the patients, such as patients with depressions, which is typical among the women, is a hindrance in building this positive relationship (Reeves et al., 2016). Lack of the patients' inspiration to listen to nurse practitioners advice and acclimate to a healthy lifestyle is also another barrier to health promotion through a positive relationship. This makes this strategy, the creation of a positive correlation between African American women with diabetes disorder and nurse practitioner, to bring changes in healthcare outcome.

Supporting Patients to be Physically Active

In this strategy, the physical activity is essential for African American women with diabetes because it improves both the mental and physical health. It also prevents complications of the disease (A-tjak et al., 2015). For instance, when bedbound patients are assisted in moving in their bed, it is considered to be a nursing intervention targeted to improve the health of the patient thus avoiding more complications. Conversely, this strategy has not been sufficient enough to bring changes in the healthcare results because African American women with the diabetic disorder, who are receiving care in hospitals, lack enough space to be physically active. In the hospital area, running or walking area is not enough for these patients to be physically active (A-tjak et al., 2015). Though there exist numerous barriers in the healthcare settings, the nurse practitioners are coming up with the ideas of how they can work to promote health through physical activity in African American women with diabetes mellitus disorder in future. In the future, the nurses are planning to organize some sports activities for the African American women with diabetes mellitus and some competitions for every patient. Then the nurses will also have a responsibility of encouraging patients to participate in these activities. The patients will then be motivated by some small gifts. These gifts offered to the patients will prompt the patients to actively take part in these competitions (Hunter et al., 2017). The hospital will then organize some activities monthly so that all the patients, not only the patients with diabetes disorder, they can participate in these activities. As a result, the patients can lengthen their relationships with other patients from diverse departments.

Educating Patients and Relatives

Health promotion can be achieved through training African American women with diabetes and their relatives about health, sickness, and self-care. The knowledge gained from education will improve the health of the patients and also the quality of life of those patients with diabetes disorder (Eldredge et al., 2016). The nurse practitioners offer education to African American women patients with diabetes through giving advice, instructing, and giving information about the disease and health for mellitus disease. Even though patient amenability is imperative, nurses have a part to play in assisting the patients to follow the advice given by the doctor regarding the treatment. The nurses have a voice of encouraging healthy behaviour on how to develop instructions when taking medicine. On the other hand, relatives also need to be educated on how best to take care of their relatives with diabetes (Hunter et al., 2017). The reason for training them is that relatives play a vital role in healthcare. As such individual education for African American women with diabetes disorder is essential. Still, this strategy is not useful in the United States, and the reason for this is because patient education is often provided in a group of several patients. This means that the nurses cannot focus on one individual because they are too busy and overworked (American Diabetes Association, 2015). Whenever they educate, they explain to the whole group at one time. This makes it difficult for African American women to get content information about health and disease.

Nurse practitioners are however willing to find ways in which they can deliver patient education and techniques they can use to create a connection with patients and relatives in their homes. Some of the ways the nurses will embrace will include the use of pictures, papers, training classes as well as the books (Yanek et al., 2016). Nevertheless, the knowledge of the nurse practitioners is not enough to offer patient education. There is a need for nurses to seek more information concerning health, self-care and the disease itself. These nurses are also faced with snags while educating the patients. These problems arise as a result of the low social status of the nurse. The African American women will only trust the nurses if the same information is given them by their doctors. So, whenever the nurse provides the instructions, they may need to confirm it from the doctor.

Innovation in Primary Health Care

Health promotion interventions help in the creation of a positive relationship with African American women with diabetes mellitus and their relatives and also support these patients to become physically active. It is through health promotion that the patients are enabled to take part in the society in which they live (Hunter et al., 2017). The nurse-patient patient relationship created will aid the patients in thinking positively about the disease. Health will be promoted through empowering African American women with diabetes to cope up with reality thus making it easier for them to handle their conditions and take part in the resources existing in their community.

The possibility of using innovations such as new technology needs to be investigated because with the use of this new technology, care for African American women with diabetes disorder will be improved (American Diabetes Association, 2015). Once this is reached, then opportunities that streamline processes aimed to benefit all sectors of primary health care will be maximised.

The national campaign that was piloted in Australia is the best example of primary health care innovation. The campaign was aimed at reduction of the burden of the diabetes disease. It encompassed specific message for high-risk groups, the health warnings, and public education in its approach. These strategies were successful in Australia although they have been tried previously without much success in bringing the change in the healthcare outcome. The reasons for its success is the use of a comprehensive approach that was not limited to the graphical national media campaign and also provision of evidence-based education materials to the African American women who were the most high-risk groups.

In the modern electronic world, innovation prospers. Accordingly, there is the need for AA women to become conversant with the different electronic modes of communication that are open to General Practitioner (GP) practice and their possible effect (Yuen &Wand, 2015). Examples of integration of...