Campus Location
Dallas Campus (Online)
Date of Award
9-2025
Document Type
DNP Project
Department
Nursing
Degree Name
Doctor of Nursing Practice
Committee Chair or Primary Advisor
Donna Atobajeun
Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor
Pattie Sunderhaus
Abstract
What if proper nutrition were a nonpharmacological treatment for health problems? Nutrition is an important key to overall wellness. When patients receive the right education, they not only get the proper nutrition in their diet but also can manage their diabetes and live a better quality of life. In rural U.S. health areas, lack of access to nutrition is a barrier to patient care. Rural areas are at an even higher risk due to a lack of resources for good nutrition. One-to-one nutrition education with a nurse specialized in diabetes helps teach patients at a learning level they will comprehend. It is important that they absorb the information and take it to heart to change their lifestyle. This study focused on rural health populations in the central-west Texas area. The clinics were in rural areas with populations of around 2,000–5,000 people. Twenty patients with type 2 diabetes were randomly selected to receive 1:1 education with a diabetes nurse, and 20 type 2 diabetes patients received only verbal education from a provider from a list of all the diabetic patients seen at the clinics. A list of all diabetes patients was collected along with their lab values. They were adults between the ages of 18 and 80 years old. Hemoglobin A1c, BMI, BP, and LDL cholesterol were used to determine if diabetes education is beneficial in treatment for patients by assessing whether there was a decrease in 6 months and in 12 months. The quasi-experimental design was used to collect data on different groups of patients at different time frames. This design helped hold the value in the data collected to a more significant level. The results of the study showed that 1:1 individual diabetes nutrition education lowers hemoglobin A1c levels by about 2% in 12 months
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Wheat, Meagan F., "Nursing Education for Type 2 Diabetes and Nutrition Using Individual 1:1 Sessions in Rural Health Care" (2025). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 941.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/941