Self Management Concept

The Concepts of Self Management and Self Care Related to a Family’s Chronic Illness Experience The resource family that was interviewed for this paper consists of Jake and Laura. Jake is 22 years old and was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in September of 2015. A concept relevant to this family and their experience with chronic illness is self management. Much of Jake’s diabetes care is self management in the home. Management of diabetes is an area that both family members have referenced frequently during home visits and wish to improve upon. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and summarize literature related to the concept of self management, and to relate the concept to the families experience with chronic illness. The literary summary

Collaboration between the health care team, and the patient is emphasized as important (Shrivastava, S. R., Shrivastava, P. S., & Ramasamy 2013). These authors describe collaboration between the patient and health care team to educate and develop a management plan, as key to diabetes self manage. Collaboration with health care providers and patient education are identified as highly important to self management in this article (Shrivastava, S. R., Shrivastava, P. S., & Ramasamy 2013). There is no reference to collaboration with health care providers, or patient education as being important to diabetes self management in the other literature, presenting a distinct difference in the reviewed literature (Miller et. Al, 2015; Schilling et. Al., 2013). Miller et. Al., (2015) and Schilling et. Al., (2013) highlight the need for a uniform definition of self management, and for the use of a single word to define self management. These articles describe the use of multiple terms interchangeably and synonymously to describe self management as a barrier to further research and conceptualization self management (Miller et. Al, 2015; Schilling et. Al., 2013). All authors provide a

Many of the activities done to manage diabetes are completed by the patient and not be the health care providers. Understanding self management and the struggles that accompany self management allowed the nursing student to gain a further understanding of the family. Many patients struggle with compliance to self management, and the life style changes that accompany diabetes. This was the case with the resource family. Both the family members with illness, and without illness, made conscious lifestyle choices to better accommodate diabetes self management. Upon reading literature related to self management the nursing student was able to make connections that allow her to further understand self management in the context of the resource family. Based on the literature the nursing student was able to ask questions more related to the patient experience, these included questions about patient management routines, habits that affect diabetes management, and questions relating to education about diabetes. Through exploration of the concept of self management, the nursing student was able to gather a more complete understanding of the family’s experience and ask questions to further understand the concept as it relates to the resource