Essay Example on Health Assessment and Teaching Plan for Diabetes

Diabetes is a health condition that occurs when an individual’s blood glucose is high. A health assessment is a plan of care that aims to identify the specific needs of a patient and how a health professional will work with the patient to ensure those needs are met. Various populations have individuals who have diabetes. For instance, diabetes is prevalent among the Navajo nation. In America, most of the Navajo population lives in rural areas. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (n.d), Navajo, the largest tribal nation in America, are twice as likely as any other nation to experience diabetes because of health inequalities such as the lack of access to care. Also, CDC (n.d) indicated that up to 200,000 people live in the Navajo Nation. Additionally, it is approximated that more than 75000 people in the Navajo nation have prediabetes, and 1 in 5 adults have diabetes (CDC, n.d). The family that I will be working with lives in a remote area where access to quality healthcare services is difficult. Furthermore, the patient that I will be working with is an older adult who lives with her two teenage children. The focus of this paper will be to discuss a health assessment and teaching plan for that particular family. The main points to be discussed include a cultural, learning, and motivation assessment, a wellness diagnosis, which relates to activity, nutrition, and stress assessment, wellness goals, as well as health promotion interventions.

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Health Assessment

Cultural Assessment

An effective healthcare plan will need a cultural assessment plan to meet the needs of the family. The purpose of a cultural assessment is to establish trust between the patient and I to determine the specific needs that will help the family with nutrition and stress reduction strategies. The cultural assessment will include the following questions,

1. What cultural group do you identify with?
2. What are some of the negative and positive experiences you have had when communicating with other people?
3. What barriers do you experience in accessing healthcare?
4. What are your feelings about living with diabetes?
5. How many meals do you have per day?
6. What are some of the foods do you normally consume?
7. Do you have someone with whom you share any problems you might have?

Learning Assessment

After the end of the presentation, the specific learning objective for the patient and the family include the following,

Learn more about her condition – the patient and her family will learn about diabetes, its causes, and prevention strategies.

Learn proper nutrition to take care of their condition. The patient will learn to incorporate only the recommended amount of calories in her diet, eat fruits and vegetables, as well as drink water without added sugars.

Learn exercises that will help the patient manage her condition. The patient will learn to do exercises such as walking and jogging 3-4 times per week.

Identify stressors in their life and the coping mechanisms – the patient will manage to identify the possible stressors in her life. Also, through the help of her family, the patient will learn the coping mechanism for stress such as educating herself about diabetes and finding support from her family, getting medications and diet plans organized, as well as practicing meditation.

Know how to get resources for diabetes control. The patient will learn about ways to access credible resources online about ways to incorporate proper diet and exercises to improve her quality of life.

Motivational Assessment

Motivation will be a major factor that the patient will need through the intervention. Some of the motivation strategies to help the client will include helping her to make good food choices, allow her to vent her frustrations, have a walk with her at least once a week, as well as remind her to take her medications daily and test their blood sugars.

Wellness Diagnosis

Physical Activity

The patient will need to understand that the lack of physical activity would make her gain weight and make her bones weaker. With that in mind, the patient will need to make physical activity as part of her family life. For example, after dinner, the patient’s daughters could help her talk a walk. Besides that, the patient could join a Native American dance group, which would help her to manage stress as well as maintain a healthy weight.

Nutrition

The patient will need a healthy nutritional plan. Some of the things that she will need to incorporate in her diet include fruits and vegetables. Participating in gardening projects, for example, would save the client the costs of buying fruits and vegetables daily. Lombard et al. (2014) indicated that encouraging gardening is a significant wellness strategy among the Navajo. It encourages a healthy lifestyle because it gives access to affordable and healthy meals. Planting local fruits and vegetables will encourage the patient as well as her family to eat healthy meals and live quality lives.

Stress

Among the Navajo nation, one possible cause of stress is their quest for tribal justice. Todacheene (2015) indicated that before the introduction of the Euro-American cultural system, the Navajo nation had its traditions and values. However, after that, the imbalance of culture made the nation lose its traditional values and cultures. Furthermore, Trevisi wt al. (2019) indicated that the lack of access to treatment on conditions such as diabetes is a burden to people in the Navajo nation. The patient will need to learn stress coping mechanisms such as social support from her family and community to help her with her condition.

Wellness Goals

Some of the wellness goals for the client that I would want to see at the end of the intervention include manage her blood sugar level, prevent foot problems, manage chronic stress, and maintain a healthy weight.

Health Promotion Interventions

Empowering Self-Care

Self-care refers to activities that the client would follow to ensure that they manage their condition. Zhao (2019) indicated that some of the self-care activities for diabetes include following the prescription medication schedule, regulating diet, testing blood sugar, and exercising. The patient will need to follow the self-care activities mentioned and incorporate foot care to improve her health outcomes.

Vulnerable Populations

Vulnerable populations are those who are economically disadvantaged, are in minority groups, and lack medical insurance. King et al. (2018) indicated that the Navajo nation experiences health inequalities because of the lack of access to care. In their study of the approach to primary care for the Navajo nation, the authors fond that working closely with the vulnerable population and doing follow-ups after admission improved the health outcomes of the participants. My client is vulnerable because she is an older adult who lives in a two-bedroom housing apartment with her children. Also, she lacks medical insurance and depends on the government for financial assistance. Doing follow-ups with the client to remind and encourage her through the intervention process will help to improve her health outcomes.

Cultural Sensitivity

The client and I are from different cultures. Due to that, encompassing cultural sensitivity would ease the intervention process and make the client be more cooperative and accepting. However, having worked in a hospital area where Native Americans lived, I became familiar with the concept of cultural sensitivity during treatment. Nevertheless, to make the client more accepting, I would seek the help of a local Navajo nurse, who would help in convincing the client to accept the intervention.

Conclusion

The health assessment and teaching plan will help the patient and her family learn to incorporate a healthy nutritional plan, learn how to do exercises, and manage stress. Identifying the specific needs of the patient will be beneficial because the patient will manage to live a healthier life. Without a doubt, the health assessment and teaching plan focused on the behavioral modification for the patient. From research about the Navajo nation, it is apparent that the community needs social support to improve their health outcomes in general. Specifically, the patient will need social support across all angles, especially from her two teenage daughters. Overall, the patient will need to be cooperative during the intervention to ensure that she improves her quality of life.

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d). Navajo youth lead the way to healthier lives in

Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. NCCDPHP Success Story. https://nccd.cdc.gov/nccdsuccessstories/TemplateSeven.aspx?s=13770&ds=1#:~:text=Approximately%20200%2C000%20Navajos%20live%20on,estimated%20that%2075%2C000%20have%20prediabetes.

King, C., Atwood, S., Brown, C., Nelson, A. K., Lozada, M., Wei, J., Merino, M., Curley, C.,Muskett, O., Sabo, S., Gampa, V., Orav, J., & Shin, S. (2018). Primary care and survival among American Indian patients with diabetes in the Southwest United States: Evaluation of a cohort study at Gallup Indian Medical Center, 2009-2016. Primary care diabetes, 12(3), 212–217. doi: 10.1016/j.pcd.2017.11.003

Lombard, K. A., Beresford, S. A., Ornelas, I. J., Topaha, C., Becenti, T., Thomas, D., & Vela, J.

G. (2014). Healthy gardens/healthy lives: Navajo perceptions of growing food locally to prevent diabetes and cancer. Health promotion practice, 15(2), 223–231. doi: 10.1177/1524839913492328

Todacheene, H. J. (2015). She saves us from monsters: The Navajo creation story and modern

tribal justice. Tribal Law Journal, 15. https://lawschool.unm.edu/tlj/volumes/vol15/TLJ_15-2_Todacheene.pdfTrevisi, L., Orav, J. E., Atwood, S., Brown, C., Curley, C., King, C., Muskett, O., Sehn, H.,

Nelson, K. A., Begay, M. G., & Shin, S. S. (2019). Integrating community health representatives with health care systems: clinical outcomes among individuals with diabetes in Navajo Nation. International journal for equity in health, 18(1), 183. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-019-1097-9

Zhao, F., Suhonen, R., Katajisto, J., Stolt, M., & Leino-Kilpi, H. (2019). Association between

diabetes-related self-care activities and positive health: A cross-sectional study. British Medical Journal Open, 9(e023878). doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2018-023878