Care coordination and community resources are essential for addressing diabetes and present multiple benefits to patients with diabetes. Care coordination is the delivery of joint and collaborated care to patients to provide holistic care and enhance recovery. Likewise, community resources are the tools that diabetics and healthcare providers can utilize to improve diabetes management. These community resources are the American Diabetes Association, local diabetes support groups, and DSMES programs provided by healthcare facilities and clinics.
Benefits of Care Coordination and Use of Community Resources
In diabetes, care coordination is pivotal as patients require multidisciplinary care comprising medication therapy from physicians, pharmacists, and nurses, dietary management from dieticians, and lifestyle modification, including education on self-management and physical activity from nurses and physiotherapists. By inculcating coordinated care, healthcare professionals can deliver patient-centered care, essential for improving diabetes through self-management. Developing care coordination plans through joint efforts of healthcare professionals also leads to better glycemic control, reduced diabetes-associated problems, and improved quality of life.
This occurs when patients are receiving appropriate medication therapy for diabetes from the interdisciplinary collaboration of physicians, pharmacists, and nurses, resulting in regulated blood glucose levels. Furthermore, lifestyle modification through nurses’ educational programs and practical assistance from dieticians and fitness experts, results in improved quality of life in diabetics. Since coordinated care plans are based on patient-centeredness, it will likely result in patient adherence to medication and treatment plans, eventually improving blood glucose regulation.
NURS FPX 4900 Assessment 3 Assessing the Problem Technology Care Coordination and Community Resources Considerations
Such a result prevents diabetic complications such as blindness, peripheral neuropathy, and cardiovascular problems, ultimately saving the additional costs associated with treating these complications (McLendon et al., 2019). However, some critics have opposing views and consider care coordination a time-consuming and exhausting step that causes patients and healthcare to face diverse barriers, such as fostering inconsistent and inadequate communication and collaboration. Consequently, it leads to delayed care treatment for patients and undermines patients’ ability to self-manage their diabetes. Ultimately, patients experience poor recovery and the onset of diabetes complications (Maneze et al., 2019).
On the other hand, effective utilization of community resources such as DSMES educational programs provided by healthcare clinics assist patients to become well-educated about their health conditions and improve their self-care behaviors in diabetes management (Amy, 2022). Moreover, patients will be empowered with motivation acquired from support groups for diabetes, improving their glycemic levels as they adhere to healthy lifestyles and medication plans. Utilizing diabetes helplines such as toll-free helplines on diabetes care and support will reduce hospitalization and emergency department visits by providing immediate services and education through helplines (Mukpalkar et al., 2020). In my nursing practice, I have witnessed fragmented care coordination and inconsistent use of community resources by patients due to multiple factors such as lack of awareness and limited existence of these resources.
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