Tried and True

Abstract

Parents become emotionally upset when learning their child has Type 1 Diabetes, yet they are expected to quickly learn functional diabetes management. The purpose of this article is to describe the application of Self-Regulation theory to guide a family-focused education intervention using human patient simulation to enhance the initial education of parents in diabetes management. A brief description is provided of the intervention framed by Self-Regulation theory. Based on the literature, we describe the educational vignettes used based on Self-Regulation in the randomized controlled trial entitled Parent Education Through Simulation-Diabetes. Examples of theory-in-practice will be illustrated by parental learning responses to this alternative educational innovation.

PETS-D (parents education through simulation-diabetes): Parents’ qualitative results

“…The HPS gives the individual the opportunity to learn about diabetes and practice necessary skills as much as necessary and at any time without causing undue harm to the child with T1D. Additionally, the trainer and the trainee do not have to wait for specific situations necessitating BG monitoring or insulin or glucagon administration to arise in order to get the training and practice they need [20]. …”

“…This paper discusses the qualitative portion of a larger IRB-approved study, whose methods and quantitative results have been presented elsewhere [19, 20]. The larger study was a randomized controlled trial with three diabetes education sessions using novel methods given to parents over the first twelve weeks after their child was diagnosed with T1D.…”

“…It follows that HPS should be a useful tool to teach parents medical interventions that they may need to perform at home on a routine basis. However, prior to the PETS-D study by Sullivan-Bolyai and colleagues [19, 20] there have been no reports of using HPS to educate either adult patients about their chronic conditions or parents about medical management of their child's chronic illness.…”

“…A randomized controlled trial was conducted using HPS to enhance the teaching of diabetes-specific survival skills to parents with children newly diagnosed with T1D [19, 20]. Post-intervention interviews were conducted to gather feedback from parents on their experiences using this new technology to assist with diabetes education.…”

Intervention Fidelity

“…For example, parents in the intervention group were able to experience a simulated seizure with administration of a glucagon placebo to the simulator compared with the control group parents who were taught about seizures but did not have the hands-on experience of simulating seizure management or administration of glucagon. The self-regulation intervention was theory-based (Sullivan-Bolyai et al, 2014) and involved three education sessions conducted at baseline, one month and three months that covered basic T1D management survival skills, including recognizing and treating hypoglycemia (Session 1), sick day management, hyperglycemia and nutritional issues (Session 2) and day-to-day management, including blood glucose pattern recognition (Session 3). The control condition included presentation of the same three vignettes by a certified diabetes educator, but without the use of a simulator.…”