Effect Of Peer Support On Quality Of Life Of Community-dwelling Empty-nest Elderly With Diabetes

Background:Recently, diabetes Mellitus has become one of the major public health problems in China, and empty-nest families have greatly increased. The prevalence of empty-nest living with diabetes has also increased markedly. The quality of life of empty-nest elderly has been seriously affected by diabetes. Nowadays, peer support has been widely recognized as a promising method to improve quality of life. Peer support means that patients with same social status or similar experience supervise and help each other with a variety of issues. The benefits of peer support on improving diabetes self-management and quality of life have been demonstrated in literatures. Peer support can effectively improve the quality of life of the patients with diabetes. However, there is less related research in China on quality of life improvement for empty-nest elderly with diabetes using peer support. Thus, it is necessary to study the effect of the peer support on improvement of the quality of life of empty-nest elderly with diabetes.Objective:The first objective is to compare the differences of quality of life among the control group, the intervention group and the intervention group after the intervention. The second one is to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention procedure.Methods:A quasi-experimental study was used in the study. Convenience sampling of104empty-nest elderly with diabetes after treatment in the Community health service centers of Pingguoyuan and Gucheng were recruited from January to March2013. The samples were divided into two subgroups. Intervention group (n=52) performed usual health education and peer support by6months. The content of the peer support intervention including the training and examination of the peer supporters, peer-patient group set up, telephone follow-up, face-to-face activities, and patient-kept self-management behavior record every day. Patients in control group (n=52) only received usual health education. The Diabetes Specific Quality of Life Scale (DSQL) was used to measure quality of life of patients, and the Scale of Diabetes Self-care Activities (SDSCA) was used to measure self-management behavior of patients. All patients were followed up and their data are collected regarding quality of life, self-management behavior, body mass index (BMI) and hemoglobin Alc (HbAlc) at3times:before the intervention, at3months and6months during the intervention.Results:102subjects finished the study,52subjects in intervention group and50subjects in control group. After intervention, the intervention group had higher level of self-management behavior and quality of life than the baseline and the control group, and lower BMI and HbAlc than the baseline and the control group. Nearly98%subjects were satisfied with the content, method and time of the peer support intervention.Conclusions:Peer support can significantly improve the quality of life in community-dwelling empty-nest elderly with diabetes, so it is worthy to carry out the peer support in the community among empty-nest elderly with diabetes in future. And this research has a far-reaching implication for diabetes treatment. Most of patients were satisfied with the peer support intervention given by face-to face activities and phone call following-up.