The Experience of Living with Diabetes Mellitus

Running head: THE EXPERIENCE OF LIVING WITH DIABETES MELLITUS
The Experience of Living with Diabetes Mellitus
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

1THE EXPERIENCE OF LIVING WITH DIABETES MELLITUS
Introduction
Diabetes mellitus refers to a group of metabolic disorders that is characterized by high
level of blood glucose and thereby causes other physiological problems. According to WHO,
diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease that can be caused by genetically or due to less
production of insulin by the cells of pancreas. Due to this deficiency of insulin in the human
body, the level of glucose in blood is enhanced and it can damage the other organ of the
body. There are generally two types of diabetes mellitus and they are type 1 and type 2.
Diabetes mellitus type 1 is associated with the inability of insulin production by the pancreas.
On the other hand, the type 2 diabetes occurs due to the body’s inability to respond to the
action of insulin due to defective insulin receptors. The report of WHO mentioned that,
almost 150 million people are suffering from diabetes mellitus in the world and it is estimated
that by the end of 2025, this number will be doubled (World Health Organization, 2019). It is
observed that, in most of the cases, the numbers of affected people belong to the developing
countries. In case of the developed countries, it is assumed that, most of the people at the age
group of 65 years or more will be affected by diabetes mellitus. In various studies, it is
reported that, the persons’ suffering from diabetes mellitus should have a good quality of life
but they are facing various obstacles during various part of their life (World Health
Organization, 2019). For the nursing personnel it is very crucial to understand the problems
of persons suffering from diabetes as the nursing care providers are the primary care
providers to those patients. Hence, the behaviour and attitudes towards the diabetes patients
are very crucial. According to the study of King et al. (2017), it is reported that, patients with
diabetes mellitus faces difficulties in coping with the health status and in addition they also
have lack in having well behaviours from the health care professionals. Moreover, in multiple
studies it is also observed that, the due to diabetes mellitus, the quality of life, daily activities
and academic achievements are hampered of those diabetes patients. By providing a family

2THE EXPERIENCE OF LIVING WITH DIABETES MELLITUS
centred care the nurses can help in the improvement of quality of life of the diabetes mellitus
patients (Ge, Wikby& Rask, 2017). In addition to this specific care strategy, the nursing
personnel can try to improve the condition of the diabetes patients by developing educational
programs (Vissarion et al., 2014).
Search Strategy
For finding the articles related to this topic, specific key words were used. For
example, at first the researchers used words or phrases like ‘quality of life’, ‘experience of
diabetes mellitus patients’. By using these key words, the researchers only able to find two
articles. After that, the researchers used key words like ‘experience’, ‘experience of family
members of diabetes mellitus’. After finding the relevant qualitative studies, the researchers
proceeded to the critical appraisal section of the assignment. Mainly online databases like
CINAHL, PubMed, and Google Scholar were used to find the articles.
Study 1 – “Perceptions of Adolescent Patients of the “Lived Experience” of Type 1
Diabetes”
The study of King et al. (2017) aimed to inspect the experiences of the adolescents
with diabetes mellitus and simultaneously tried to find the challenges such as fears, attitudes
of patients living with diabetes. In this cross sectional study, the researchers used in depth
interviews to take opinion form the study participants. In this study 20 adolescents were
recruited and interviews were performed by the researchers. All the patients with diabetes
mellitus were diagnosed in their childhood. Five categories of the patients’ live experiences
were explored in this interview method and they are Develop Skills, Barriers, Social World,
Manage Emotion, and Health Care Professionals. in this study, it has been reported that
Adolescents with type 1 diabetes are suffering from multi factorial problems. Diabetes type 1
impacts their daily activities and influences their academic performance and personal