Paper
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Verification of Life Circle Model and Vital Power Model
Shu Chun Chien, RN, PhD, Nursing, Miyazaki Prefectural Nursing University, Miyazaki, Japan
| Learning Objective #1: Describe the characteristics of Life Circle Model (LCM) and Vital Power Model (VPM)
|
| Learning Objective #2: Analyze the data of diabetic patients collected by IT instruments and be able to determine the key viewpoints of the results |
Metabolic control of a diabetic patient is the result of his or her 24-hour lifestyle. IT instruments can collect and transform data of the life process of diabetic patients. However, what nursing principal is used to analyze the data is the key to identifying problems.
Objective: To verify the effectiveness of Life Circle Model (LCM) and Vital Power Model (VPM) when utilizing IT instruments to identify life style problems of diabetic patients.
Methods: Three IT instruments (blood sugar, intake from meals, and caloric expenditure from physical exercise) were utilized to collect patients’ daily lifestyle data. Participants included 3 females (A, B and C) and one male (D). Average HbA1c of participants was 9%. Other factors were recorded by participants or collected by interviews. All data was assessed on a daily basis for half a year. LCM and VPM, created by Hiroko Usui, were applied to analyze problems of diabetic patients.
Findings: Physical exercise data shows that A was more active at night than during the day because of her working at nights. Late night meals can be identified as her major problem. For B, major problems were overeating and forgetting to regularly take her medication due to insufficient life management competence. For C, an overly active late night social life caused deficiency of meals and morning insulin administration. For D, the problem was traced to regular consumption of high calorie convenience store foods since his junior high school days.
Conclusion: Essentially, diabetes is a lifestyle-related disease. LCM and VPM were found to be constructive in helping nurses to better view the daily lives of the participants by accessing individual IT data. This data was helpful to explore the entire process of the patient’s 24 hour-a-day life in order to identify major health problems for the diabetic patients in this study.