You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Primary health care
Randomised control trial
Compared to standard physician care for diabetes, nurse specialists provide similar care in terms of quality of life
  1. Michelle L Litchman
  1. College of Nursing, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
  1. Correspondence to : Michelle L Litchman
    College of Nursing, University of Utah, 10 South 2000 East, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA; michelle.litchman{at}utah.edu

http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/eb-2012-100945

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Commentary on: Arts EE, Landewe-Cleuren SA, Schaper NC, et al. The cost-effectiveness of substituting physicians with diabetes nurse specialists: a randomized controlled trial with 2-year follow-up. J Adv Nurs 2012;68:1224–34OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed

    Implications for practice and research

    • Care provided by diabetes nurse specialists to uncomplicated patients with diabetes was not inferior to physician care, in terms of patient quality of life and expenditures.

    • Care patterns were not equal between study groups; diabetes nurse specialists followed a preset protocol and had referral limitations.

    Context

    Diabetes is economically burdensome worldwide. Treating diabetes and preventing its complications cost at least US$465 billion in 2011, translating to 11% of total healthcare expenditures in adults.1 Despite the overwhelming costs of diabetes, overall care remains undesirable. Programmes demonstrating reduction in diabetes-related healthcare costs, while resulting in positive outcomes, will be important to replicate. …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Competing interests None.