Determining health care needs and difficulties faced by older people with diabetics

ABTRACTDETERMINING HEALTH CARE NEEDS AND DIFFICULTIES FACED BYOLDER PEOPLE WITH DIABETICSThis study was designed to determine health care needs and difficulties faced byolder people suffering from diabetics.This study is a cross-sectional research. The universe of this study under the?Project for Developing Health Care Services for Older People by BoluGovernorship? was 5712 people over and at the age of 65 living in Bolu city center.608 people were randomly chosen as sampling with a simple systematic method andit was found that 122 (20%) had diabetics. The ones with diabetics were visited athome and asked to fill a questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of three sectionssuch as a. sociodemographic features, b. applied treatment type (oral antidiabetics,insulin treatment, nutrition treatment, and exercise), c. blood sugar control, and italso contained related difficulties and health care needs of these people.Many of the older people with diabetics are female (66.4%) averagely at theage of 72 at the age group 65-74 (68.9%), married (58.2%), literate/at primary schoollevel (54.1%) and have social insurance (97.5%). It was found that 87.7% of the oneswith diabetics suffer from type 2; 53.8% had difficulties in using oral medication and86.7% in using insulin; 56.6% are bound to someone else in preparing food; 78.8%had difficulties in nutrition treatment; 15.6% weren?t able to go shopping for foodand chew food; 67.2% didn?t make physical exercise, 98.4% didn?t get blood sugarcontrol; 56.6% suffered from an increase in blood sugar; 41.8% had no idea if theirblood sugar increased or decreased and they generally needed help in these issues.Many of the older people with diabetics have difficulties in oral antidiabetics use,insulin application, nutrition, physical exercise and blood sugar control and they needhelp. Therefore, due to the fact that older people need more health care and facemore difficulties in terms of diabetic health care and treatment when compared toyounger ones, it is believed that educating people to help older people at home maycontribute to solve problems.Keywords: Diabetes mellitus, elderly, care needs, difficulties, nursing care.