Approximately 79 million Americans have prediabetes, and just about 26 million Americans have diabetes (Albright & Gregg, 2013). According to the CDC, one in nine Americans have diabetes and as many as one in five adults could have diabetes by 2025 if this growing trend continues (Albright & Gregg, 2013). There are many complications involved with this chronic illness; these include heart disease, blindness, amputations, kidney disease, disability, and mortality (Albright & Gregg, 2013). The organization that I work always has a high number of diabetics, but from experience, I can see that the minority population that is being more affected are Hispanics. More than half of the diabetics in my facility are Hispanics. The following facts show how diabetes impacts Hispanics:
• The risk of diabetes is 66% higher among Hispanic/Latino Americans than among non-Hispanic white Americans.
• Hispanics are 1.7 times more likely to start treatment for ESRD related to diabetes than non-Hispanic …show more content…
In this era, many people are surfing the internet or watching videos online when they have a question regarding their illness or complaints. Therefore, nurses should assess the health literacy of their patients during their initial screening to educate patients in how to evaluate web sources that offer accurate health information. Health literacy is the ability of a patient to obtain and understand health information to manage their health (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015). McGonigle and Mastrian (2015) found that about 75% of online users do not assess the source for credibility or check if the source is up to date when searching health information online. Also, 3% of online users reported that they know someone that was hurt from obtaining health information from web sources (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015). We as nurses need to improve the health literacy of our patients to improve health