Evidence-Based Practice Research on Diabetes

Evidence-Based Practice Project-Paper on Diabetes
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Evidence-Based Practice Project-Paper on Diabetes
The article by Charalampopoulos, et al. (2017) focuses on psycho-educational interventions in the treatment of Type 1 diabetes among children and adolescent. Psycho-educational interventions are educational programs that incorporate knowledge of diabetes, goal-setting, coping and stress management techniques in the treatment of diabetes (Charalampopoulos et al., 2017). This helps eliminate the psychological effects associated with the diagnosis and treatment of Type 1 diabetes among patients. The study was conducted in the UK, and a meta-analysis was conducted to establish the efficacy of the interventions. The interventions considered for the study had to be from children and adolescent receiving standard care for Type 1 diabetes in randomized controlled trials. The data was analyzed using meta-analysis and narrative synthesis.
The results of the study revealed that psycho-educational interventions have several outcomes in the treatment of Type 1 diabetes. First, there was a reduction in the level of glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), which was only recorded in four trials out of a total of nine trials that were pooled in the study. These results indicate that the reduction of HbA1c is not statistically significant because the psycho-educational interventions only accounted for a 0.1% reduction of HbA1c among children and young people. This was contrary to the results of similar studies that were conducted in North America, which revealed that there exists a significant reduction of HbA1c, which is attributable to the psycho-educational interventions. The difference was, however, attributed to several factors. One of the factors was that the interventions in the trials in the UK were conducted by non-specialists who were either dieticians or nurses, while those in North America were conducted by specialists either in the field of psychiatry or psychology (Charalampopoulos et al., 2017). Also, the trials in the UK were conducted in a clinical setting, hence the use of nurses as interventionists, while those in North America were conducted in non-clinical settings. This is an indication that the intervention is only effective in reducing HbA1c if specialists administer it in the field of psychiatry or psychology. The criteria for selection was also different because while the control groups considered for the current study received only standard care, control groups in other studies such as those conducted in the U.S. included patients receiving more than the standard care of treatment.
Second, the results revealed that the psycho-educational intervent...