Date of Conferral
11-14-2025
Date of Award
November 2025
Degree
Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)
School
Nursing
Advisor
Mattie Burton
Abstract
This project was a staff education program to enhance nurses' knowledge and skills in Diabetes Self-Management Education (DSME) in reducing hospital readmission. Diabetes mellitus is a chronic metabolic disorder that occurs as a direct result of the body's inability to produce enough insulin or the inability to utilize insulin in the bloodstream effectively, consequently accounting for life-threatening health complications. At the local organization, where diabetes is the third leading cause of hospitalization, evidence shows that it critically affects about 25% of the patient population. Also, some care providers at the organization do not have the distinctive competencies to give DSME to patients with diabetes before discharge, resulting in further hospital readmission. In implementing this project, a staff education program was deployed to improve knowledge of DSME in reducing readmission for diabetic patients. This DNP Capstone Project aimed to use a staff education program to improve nurses' knowledge of DSME in enhancing T2DM and consequently reducing hospital readmission. The practice-focused The question was, in an inpatient primary care medical center, will training in the DSME program improve knowledge toward the ultimate goal of reducing readmission? Twenty-five nurses participated in this education program. As for date analysis, a one-group pre- and post-test design was deployed to evaluate the impact of this staff education training on 25 participants. The findings of this project study showed a significant mean difference (32.4) between post-test (M= 99.60) and pre-test (M= 67.20), showing that training led to an improvement in the test scores. The project limitation squarely fell on a small sample size, which impacts the generalizability of the findings. The findings showed that when DSME is integrated into a care facility, it can lead to positive social change by improving awareness of evidence-based practice and decreasing costs burdens for healthcare and patients. In conclusion, equipping care providers with DSME via Educational training can significantly improve their understanding of pre-discharge patients education, executing a discharge checklist, medication reconciliation, post-discharge follow-up, and empowering patients to engage in lifestyle changes, consequently accounting for better patient education and care, resulting in a decrease in readmissions.
Recommended Citation
Okechukwu, Vivian Adaora, "Staff Education Program to Improve Nurses' knowledge of Diabetes Self-Management Education (DSME) Toward Reducing Readmissions" (2025). Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies. 18707.
https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/18707
