Nursing phenomena in diabetic patients - a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Diabetic patients present nursing phenomena scarcely studied in the literature. The aim of this paper was to identify the nursing phenomena, considered health alterations, presented by diabetic patients registered and accompanied in a Basic Unit of Health, with base in the International Classification for Nursing Practice. It is a cross-sectional study developed with 65 diabetic for randomized select accompanied in a basic unit of health. It was analyzed the health condition alteration indicative physiologic phenomena. The nominal data were organized in tables with absolute, percentile frequencies with estimate of the confidence interval of 95%. The numeric variables were analyzed by average difference tests (Student's T). It stood out the phenomena related to sensation functions (100,0%), restoration (66,2%) and circulation (52,3%). In this functions were identified 30 phenomena of different nursing being the ones of larger frequency the Altered vision (80,0%), Hunger (49,2%), Pain (47,7%), Thirst (40,0%), Intermittent sleep (35,4%), Itching (33,8%) and Altered Hearing (26,2%). We were identified statistically significant association between categorized variables glycemia and age (p = 0,007) and between categorized variables glycemia and education (p = 0,007). It was concluded that the main nursing phenomena identified are consequences of the physiologic alterations produced by the elevated glycemia. The visual alterations, hunger, pain and thirst are the most frequent and collaborate for function sensation alterations.