Abstract:

Adequate knowledge and consistent practice of specialized diabetic foot care greatly improves the quality of life of diabetics. However, there has been a near absent practice of specialized diabetic foot care observed in health institutions in Rivers State, Nigeria. The study assessed the knowledge of diabetic foot care among 100 nurses in the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital and the Rivers State Hospitals Management Board Hospitals (which include General Hospitals from all the local government areas) in Rivers state, Nigeria before and after interventional training. A one-day hands-on training workshop on diabetic foot care, adopted from the National Institute for Healthcare Excellence (NICE), was implemented to train one hundred (100) nursing practitioners. A structured questionnaire containing questions on different aspects of diabetic foot care was interviewer-administered to the nurses and scored accordingly before and after the training. Knowledge of footwear assessment and assessment of patient’s capacity for self-care was found to be significantly low prior to training. There was significant improvement in knowledge of the different aspects of diabetic foot care among the nurses after the intervention. This buttresses the need for formal training of nursing practitioners on diabetic foot care for improvement of the quality of diabetes care in Rivers State, Nigeria.

Keywords: Diabetes, Diabetic Foot, Foot Care, Nursing Practitioners, Interventional Training.

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