Diabetes knowledge and related cultural safety knowledge: What do new graduate nurses know?

Abstract

In New Zealand, Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is at epidemic proportions, with poor glycaemic control contributing to more patients with diabetes presenting to inpatient settings. These patients come from diverse cultural backgrounds, so their specific socioeconomic, psychosocial and social requirements are important to understand and address for the delivery of equitable and culturally appropriate diabetes care. Nurses have a central role in providing diabetes care, but they need sufficient diabetes knowledge and cultural safety skills to provide this care effectively. New graduate nurses are educated on the management of diabetes, however, there is no current research on how this education translates to the effective provision of appropriate care for inpatients with T2DM. The purpose of this study is twofold: to measure the diabetes management and related cultural safety knowledge of hospital-based new graduate nurses and to explore their experiences with providing diabetes care. Dewey’s pragmatic paradigm underpins this mixed methods research that will be conducted with new graduate nurses in a South Auckland Hospital. An adapted version of Daly et al.’s existing published telephone questionnaire (2019) will provide quantitative data and focus group interviews, the qualitative data. Findings will highlight nurses’ diabetes knowledge and diabetes-related cultural safety knowledge, and identify gaps that affect a nurse’s ability to tailor diabetes care to the patient’s cultural needs. Nurses who are educated and can give culturally appropriate care can help reduce the number of ethnic minorities presenting with diabetes complications improving the health users’ outcomes. The study’s findings will inform organisations about diabetes education needs and influence undergraduate and post-graduate nursing diabetes training programmes.