Eureka! Institutional Repository

Diabetes mellitus is a disease accompanied by various complications. For effective management and treatment of the disease requires regular nursing care and patient education. Parents of children with type 1 diabetes every day come up against complications of the disease and they have, in collaboration with health professionals, to deal with the specific arising problems. The present work evaluates the views of parents of children with type 1 diabetes mellitus on the quality of nursing care provided. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the views and attitudes of parents regarding the quality of care provided to children with type 1 diabetes. Material-Methods: A time study was carried out. The study population consisted of parents of children who visit the Diabetic Clinic of the 3rd Pediatric Clinic of Hippocrates Hospital of Thessaloniki. The sample was drawn using the convenience method. The study tool was a structured questionnaire by Ball et al. (1988), in his Greek edition (Matziou, 2006). The questionnaire included questions about parents' views and attitudes about the care provided by nurses to children, as well as demographics. Data were analyzed using SPSS Statistics v25. Results: 89.7% of parents believe that the nursing staff provided them with information or guidance on diabetes mellitus. 84.5% of the sample stated that children were informed prior to any screening or hospitalization procedures. The majority of parents believe that they supported their child very much or too much during the painful procedures at 41.4% and 40.4% respectively. Furthermore, the answers provided by the participants seem to trust “very” at 42.9% and “too much” at 32.6% by the nursing staff. A percentage of 60.6% also believes that the hospital staff who had taken care of their children was not indifferent "at all" about their concerns. Conclusions: Parents seemed particularly satisfied with the overall nursing care provided. The majority of participants stated that they had a very good cooperation with the nursing staff and a great deal of encouragement from them to actively participate in the care of their child.