Juraj Čáp

Quality of life and treatment satisfaction in the context of diabetes self-management education

The aim of this study is to identify and compare factors affecting quality of life and treatment satisfaction in people attending the structured educational programme for patients with intensified insulin therapy. A sample of 104 patients was recruited from diabetes specialized centre between November 2006 and March 2007. For measure patients quality of life, the Audit Diabetes Dependent Quality of Life questionnaire and for measure patients satisfaction with their treatment regimen, the Diabetes Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire status version was used. Treatment satisfaction has different variables or predictors from quality of life. Quality of life was affected by the number of reported diabetic late complications, type of insulin regimen, age and diabetes duration. Type of insulin regimen, the frequency of blood glucose self-monitoring and perceived frequency of hyperglycaemia demonstrated the significant association with treatment satisfaction. Our findings might help health-care professionals have a deeper understanding of the factors affecting quality of life and treatment satisfaction and thereby aid in the design of strategies to maintain or improve quality of life and treatment satisfaction.

Content Validation of Hopelessness in Slovakia and Czech Republic

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to validate the content of nursing diagnosis hopelessness in Slovak and Czech social and cultural contexts. METHODS The Fehrings Diagnostic Content Validity Model was used to measure the importance of diagnostic characteristics of hopelessness. FINDINGS Only three NANDA characteristics and five Nowotny Hope Scale characteristics have reached the value of weighted average of the scores for defining characteristics. CONCLUSION NANDA characteristics are concerned with the affective-behavioral dimension of hopelessness. Nowotny Hope Scale characteristics that reached high importance in our study are concerned with its cognitive-temporal dimension. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE The defining characteristics of hopelessness identified in our study could be tested in the development of instrument to measure hope in clinical practice.

Dignity from the nurses’ and older patients’ perspective: A qualitative literature review:

Introduction: Dignity is one of the most important values sensitively perceived by patients in nursing care. Older patients have been identified as having a high risk of losing their dignity in institutional care. To promote optimum nursing care, a deeper insight into the problem of older patients’ dignity is needed. Aim: The aim was to identify, analyse and synthesise the qualitative evidence of dignity views and factors affecting it from the nurses’ and older patients’ perspective in the context of nursing care and to compare synthesised finding from the both perspective. Methods: A literature review of qualitative evidence was chosen as a study design. The ENTREQ statement was implemented to enhance transparency. The CASP – Qualitative checklist and the thematic synthesis for synthesised findings were used. The electronic databases Academic Search Complete, CINAHL, Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition, MEDLINE and PROQUEST were used to gather information for qualitative studies. Results: A total of 306 papers were retrieved. Fourteen qualitative studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review after methodological quality assessment using CASP. Four main themes of dignity from nurses’ perspective were synthesised: seeing the patient as a unique person, communication and privacy, involving the patient, and working culture and environment. From the patients’ perspective, six main themes were synthesised: autonomy and control, privacy, relationships, care and comfort, communication and identity. The comparison shows that the key difference is that older patients highlighted the theme relationships and nurses underlined the theme working culture and environment. Conclusion: The model structures of the older patients’ dignity from both the nurses’ and patients’ perspectives support the idea of a multidimensional structure of human dignity. The resulting model might be used in a nursing self-reflection, in the management of the institutions providing all-day care for the older people and in the education and practice.