Teaching Experience: Diabetes Prevention

NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.

NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.

Table of Contents

Teaching Experience
Summary of Teaching Plan
Epidemiological Rationale for Topic
Evaluation of Teaching Experience
Community Response to Teaching
Areas of Strengths
Areas of Improvement
References

Teaching Experience

Education of the local community members is one of the most efficacious ways of engaging licensed nursing students in the clinical process and indirect care experiences. Interaction with possible patients provides additional practice in communication, teaches novice nurses to be attentive and compassionate, and broadens their horizons. The present essay describes the experience of teaching people how to prevent diabetes and identifies its strong sides and areas for improvement.

Summary of Teaching Plan

This teaching targets members of the Punjabis Sikh society who are at risk of developing diabetes. To keep the audience interested and not overload it with information, the lecture lasted 35 minutes with a short break. One of the most critical components of the teaching was a test on diabetes results of which were announced after the class. The group consisted of 5 adults because this optimal size guarantees that the educator will pay enough attention to every participant and answer all the questions in detail.

The primary objective of the seminar is to reduce the annual number of diabetes cases and familiarize the audience with the very first signs of this disease. Therefore, at the first stage of the teaching, it is planned to introduce the effects of diabetes, including heart attack, stroke, cataract, and severe problems with nerves and feet. At the second stage, the nurse proceeds to explain the key symptoms of diabetes that under no circumstances could be ignored and require a prompt visit of a doctor. At this point, the goal of a nurse is to persuade the audience to be more vigilant about their health and do not ignore the discomfort. Afterward, the educator talks about such preventive measures as regular check-ups, a healthy diet, an active lifestyle, and body mass index normalization. Finally, the nurse familiarizes the members of the educational group with the straightforward algorithm of actions for the cases when a patient realizes that he or she has symptoms of diabetes. Apart from the oral presentation, the nurse distributes booklets with information on the topic, a list of preventive measures, and an action plan for those who found acute symptoms of type 2 diabetes.

Epidemiological Rationale for Topic

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is one of the most widespread diseases in the world. According to the report of the World Health Organization (2021), before the pandemic of COVID-19, diabetes was “the ninth leading cause of death” that takes 1.5 million lives per annum (para. 1). What is more, the current situation with diabetes is described by numerous scholars as pandemic (Toniolo et al., 2019; Selvin & Juraschek, 2020; Muniyappa & Gubbi, 2020). Currently, approximately 450 million people in the world are diagnosed with this disease, and by 2045 this number will be more than 600 million people (Toniolo et al., 2019). At this point, it should be mentioned that diabetes has significant implications for the ongoing pandemic of COVID-19. More precisely, several scholars have proven that diabetes complicates the course of coronavirus disease and increases the probability of a fatal outcome (Selvin & Juraschek, 2020; Muniyappa & Gubbi, 2020). The presented evidence suggests that diabetes is an acute problem that requires immediate action. Education of people at risk of developing this disease is one of the most effective measures that could be undertaken to tackle the described problem.

The target audience of the teaching is the adult population of Punjabis Sikhs because, in this community, the situation with diabetes is also adverse. The study of Gonzalez and Chauhan (2019) reveals that every fifth Punjabis Sikh older than 35 years develops type 2 diabetes mellitus. The reasons for such a high frequency of diabetes cases in this population lie in its genetic factors, cultural norms, and tradition to eat a lot of food that contains sugar (Sidhu et al., 2020). The situation is exacerbated by the fact that not all Punjabis Sikhs who live in the US could consult a doctor. That is because of the language barrier and the lack of awareness of the symptoms, causes, and consequences of type 2 diabetes. This way, the assistance of licensed nursing students in spreading information on diabetes among the adult members of the Punjabis Sikh community and educating Punjabis Sikhs is immensely precious.

Evaluation of Teaching Experience

Even though it is impossible to estimate the effectiveness of the teaching in the long-term perspective at the present moment, it still has already brought some positive effects. More precisely, out of five adults who attended the lecture, three were diagnosed with the early stage of diabetes, and two are at high risk of developing this disease in the nearest future. Hence, the lecture’s major achievement is that these people realized that they require immediate treatment, should take their health seriously, change their eating behavior, and increase rates of daily activity.

Overall, the experience of teaching could be regarded as successful. The most challenging aspect was to persuade at least five community members to attend the short class. The reasons for this are their past negative experience with medicine and the absence of understanding why prophylactic of any disease is crucial. Undoubtedly, when more than half of the participants were tested positive for diabetes, they were grateful for coming to the lecture. Nonetheless, prior to it, it took a considerable amount of time to explain to them how important it is to set aside a couple of hours for this activity. Fortunately, the presenter has managed to grab the attention of the audience from the very first minutes of the presentation and maintain their attention for the following hour. The primary drivers of this training’s success are the friendliness and communicativeness of the presenter.

As for the nurse who presented this short course, the critical inference is that it is crucial to put yourself in the patient’s shoes to increase the quality of the medical service. A nurse should be aware of a patient’s background, his or her culture, traditions, and worldview to establish trusting relations and guarantee that a patient will follow the treatment plan. Another inference from this teaching experience is that nurses help is not limited by the walls of a clinical facility. Instead, nurses can target people who hesitate to come to hospitals and generally cannot see a doctor due to a language barrier, as it is in the case of the Punjabis Sikh community members.

Community Response to Teaching

After the first lecture, it is still too early to discuss the response of the entire Punjabis Sikh society to the provided teaching. However, the positive sign is that the five group members who attended the first consolation on the prevention of diabetes mellitus noted that they feel like recommending it to their friends, colleagues, and relatives. Furthermore, a few days after the lecture, two targeted community members contacted the presenter and asked to include them in the list of participants for the following class. Even though it was not initially planned to conduct several seminars on the same topic, the received request under no circumstances could be ignored.

As it has already been mentioned above, three out of five participants were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes within the framework of the teaching. The fact that during the following four days, all of them visited the local hospital and were assigned a treatment plan is an outstanding achievement of this short class. These adults actions mean that they took the information provided during the presentation seriously and that they were persuaded of the necessity to treat this disease. The author hopes that such educative classes will be attended by far more than five representatives of the community in the future.

Areas of Strengths

The first strong side to be mentioned is the persuasiveness of the lecturer and the clarity of the distributed booklets and the presentation. The primary purpose of this brief lecture was to explain a complex ailment with simple words for people who have knowledge in the field of medicine and healthcare. The laconism of the slides and handouts assisted in communicating the very basic and the most crucial ideas to the audience. Another area of strength is the performance and communication skills of the presenter. Constant interaction with the audience kept them deeply involved in the lecture and greatly assisted in persuading them to take a diabetes test, visit a hospital, and change their lifestyle.

Still, the primary advantage of the teaching is that the participants indeed have decided to make an appointment with the doctor and took their health problem seriously. The possibility to test the blood for diabetes at the end of the lecture was an action that increased the effectiveness of the entire session. If the teaching consisted of the presentation exclusively, the probability that the participants would attend a hospital to check the blood for diabetes was low. People commonly have a lot of other duties and urgent matters, so it was necessary to combine the educative presentation with the blood testing.

Areas of Improvement

Although the teaching could be regarded as effective, there is room for improvement. The Punjabis Sikh community in the USA consists of more than 200,000 members, and five adults who attended the lecture are a drop in the ocean. This way, it is essential to attract more people to participate in such events and take more serious actions on promoting such sessions in the local Punjabis Sikh community. The second issue is that the presenter gave each participant three booklets during this short class: brochures with the list of symptoms, brochures with the list of preventive measures, and action plan brochures. The problem is not in the quality of the handouts but in their number. In the epoch of digital technologies, it could be more effective to provide the audience with the link to download one pdf file with the same information as in the three paper booklets. This solution not only guarantees that participants will not lose the papers, but it is also ecology-friendly.

References

Gonzalez, M., & Chauhan, H. (2019). Health Needs Assessment of the Punjabi Sikh Community in the San Joaquin Valley. APHA’s 2019 Annual Meeting and Expo (Nov. 2-Nov. 6). American Public Health Association.

Muniyappa, R., & Gubbi, S. (2020). COVID-19 pandemic, coronaviruses, and diabetes mellitus. American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism, 318(5), E736-E741. Web.

Selvin, E., & Juraschek, S. P. (2020). Diabetes epidemiology in the COVID-19 pandemic. Diabetes Care, 43(8), 1690-1694. Web.

Sidhu, T., Lemetyinen, H., & Edge, D. (2020). ‘Diabetes doesn’t matter as long as we’re keeping traditions alive’: A qualitative study exploring the knowledge and awareness of type 2 diabetes and related risk factors amongst the young Punjabi Sikh population in the UK. Ethnicity & Health, 1-19. Web.

Toniolo, A., Cassani, G., Puggioni, A., Rossi, A., Colombo, A., Onodera, T., & Ferrannini, E. (2019). The diabetes pandemic and associated infections: Suggestions for clinical microbiology. Reviews in Medical Microbiology, 30(1), 1-17. Web.

World Health Organization (2021). Diabetes. Web.

Click Here To Order Now!