article · Nursing Open
Young people living with type 1 diabetes and their caregivers in southern Ghana demonstrate critical gaps in their knowledge and skills for managing the condition. While participants showed adequate understanding of blood glucose self-monitoring and treating hyperglycaemia, they lacked sufficient knowledge regarding carbohydrate counting, managing severe hypoglycaemia, and handling intercurrent illnesses. Participants sourced management information from both healthcare and non-healthcare providers, with some non-clinical information proving unhelpful. Access to diabetes self-management education directly influenced practical management understanding and routines. These identified limitations compromise the ability of young patients to transition into independent self-management. Addressing these deficits requires clinicians and supportive organisations to expand structured educational initiatives to explicitly cover nutritional calculation, severe hypoglycaemic episodes, and illness care.
Type 1 diabetes frequently emerges during youth, when patients rarely possess the competencies needed to manage a chronic condition safely. Identifying specific knowledge gaps in low-resource settings enables clinicians and healthcare organisations to tailor educational initiatives. Closing these deficits helps patients and caregivers manage acute complications, prevent severe episodes of low blood sugar, and build the confidence required for independent care.
The findings represent early-stage qualitative research rather than a commercial technology. However, the identified educational gaps could directly inform the development of targeted self-management training programmes, clinical education tools, or digital health content. Primary users would be healthcare providers, patient support centres, and public health organisations delivering chronic disease education in low-resource environments. Practical deployment would require converting these baseline insights into structured instructional interventions.
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AIMS AND OBJECTIVE: We sought to investigate knowledge and skills of type 1 diabetes (T1D) management among young people living with the disease and their caregivers. Our aim is to provide baseline evidence to inform T1D self-management education for young people living with the disease and their caregivers. BACKGROUND: Both local and international guidelines recommend ongoing T1D self-management education for people living with the disease. This is because T1D often develops among young people who rarely have the competencies to adequately manage their condition. However, the extent to which young people living with T1D and their caregivers can self-manage this chronic disease in a low-resource country like Ghana is unknown. METHODS: Using a phenomenological study design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 young people living with type 1 diabetes, 12 caregivers and 6 healthcare providers in southern Ghana. Data were collected at homes, hospitals and support group centres of participants via face-to-face interviews, photovoice and video-conferencing. The data were analysed thematically using QSR NVivo 11. RESULTS: The young people living with T1D and their caregivers demonstrated knowledge and skills in the self-monitoring of blood glucose, and the treatment of hyperglycaemia. Areas of more marginal or lack of knowledge were concerning carbohydrate counting, severe hypoglycaemia and the management of intercurrent illnesses. Young persons living with T1D and their caregivers received their management information from healthcare and non-healthcare providers. Access to diabetes self-management education influenced T1D management knowledge and practices. CONCLUSION: Young people living with type 1 diabetes and their caregivers possessed limited scope of knowledge on type 1 diabetes self-management. Multiple sources of T1D knowledge were found, some of which may not be helpful to patients. The knowledge gaps identified compromises transitional independence and self-management capacity. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: It is important for clinicians and organizations that provide T1D education to provide diabetes self-management education also on managing hypoglycaemia, carbohydrate counting and managing T1D during intercurrent life events among young people living with T1D. NO PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: Patients and their caregivers were interviewed as research participants. They did not conceptualize, analyse, interpret or prepare the manuscript.
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DOI: 10.1002/nop2.1498
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