| dc.description.abstract | Diabetes is a chronic, metabolic disease that requires lifelong medical management, health education and self-management. According to a World Health Organisation report, there is a global increase in the prevalence of diabetes and even more so in the low-and middle-income countries, specifically Nigeria, which has the highest number of people with diabetes in the African region of the World Health Organisation. As a global issue, the positive health outcomes of diabetes are tied to health education and self-management of the disease and using the health resources of nations. However, in the context of limited resources in Nigeria, there is a need for improvement of health education in self-management of Type 2 diabetes. Health education that is provided in some Nigerian health facilities is reported to be unstructured, without patients’ active participation, not tailored to the needs and the interests of the patients and limited collaboration between multi-disciplinary professionals. In this context, the aim of the study was to develop a structured health education programme for self-management of patients with Type 2 diabetes, to facilitate the quality of the lives of these patients .An adapted intervention mapping framework provided a structured process for development of an evidenced based programme. A mixed method approach was followed. In the first phase of the study an exploratory descriptive qualitative research design was followed. A purposive sampling approach was used in selecting (i) participants, who were patients with Type 2 diabetes and (ii) health-care professionals working in two health-care institutions in Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria. In phase 1, Step1 of the research was a situation analysis, which consisted of conducting 30 semi-structured interviews with patients; observation of nurses providing health education; and five focus group discussions with health-care professionals (nurses, dieticians and social workers). Qualitative data analysis was accomplished through using Tesch’s (1990) steps of analysis to identify themes and categories. The situation analysis revealed, firstly, that there was a lack in the knowledge and self-management of Type 2 diabetes among patients. Secondly, that the health-care professionals acknowledged their collective role in health education and were burdened with the patients who were non-adherent to self-management. The result also revealed the necessity to change from a traditional teaching method to a structured educational process that is patient-centred. The second phase of the research was the stage of developing the educational programme through collaboration with the stakeholders (health-care professionals and patients with Type 2 diabetes) using the findings from the data-analysis of the first phase supported with literature. In phase 2, Step 2 was to develop matrices from the data analysis in Phase 1 for the programme. Step 3 added theory-based intervention methods and practical applications to the preliminary program and in Step 4 the programme was described. This was followed in Step 5 by preparing health-care professionals for offering the programme to patients and implementing and evaluating the programme. The evaluation of the programme was by means of a quantitative pilot study in which a pre-post-test in a quasi-experiment was conducted with 28 patients and qualitative interviews after the program and post intervention interviews with the participants. The evaluation showed that the program was effective in meeting its objectives. In Step 6 a plan for the adoption, implementation, sustainability and evaluation of future implementations was developed. | en_US |
