Tensions in Diabetes Care Practice: Ethical Challenges with a Focus on Nurses in a Home-Based Care Team

Excerpt

Caring for patients with chronic diseases, including diabetes, causes ethical dilemmas and challenges healthcare professionals constantly during their daily work, particularly nurses. This qualitative case study concentrates on home-care nurses’ experience in diabetes care practice, where complex care takes place in a multi-professional team. The research findings show that home-care nurses experience tensions in the diabetes care context. Tensions can be identified around three themes: identification of care receivers, performance of care actions and foundations of care relationships. The healthcare environment revealed a sense of responsibility without authority, while professional caring responsibilities are not made explicit. Nurses are observably overwhelmed in diabetes care. The research findings may assist in improving diabetes care practice by clarifying the nursing professional’s roles, intensifying nurses’ professional awareness and caring competencies, as well as establishing a nourishing care environment in which all care team members share responsibility and caring.