What Nurses Know. Diabetes

Honorable Mention: Foreword Book of the Year Health 2010

In the US, 23.6 million people-7.8 percent of the population-have diabetes. Diabetes can lead to serious complications, including blindness, kidney damage, cardiovascular disease, peripheral neuropathy and lower-limb amputations. People with diabetes can lower the occurrence of these and other diabetes complication by controlling blood glucose, blood pressure, and blood lipids.

What Nurses Know...Diabetes sheds new light on this disease from a trusted source: nurses.

• Numerous call-out boxes with What Nurses Know "
• Definitions of Common Terms
• Resources, online tools, and specific websites to those living with diabetes

Nurses hold a critical role in modern health care that goes beyond their day-to-day duties. They share more information with patients than any other provider group, and are alongside patients twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, offering understanding of complex health issues, holistic approaches to ailments, and advice for the patient that extends to the family.

Nurses themselves are a powerful tool in the healing process. What Nurses Know gives down-to-earth information, addresses consumers as equal partners in their care, and explains clearly what readers need to know and wants to know to understand their condition and move forward with their lives.

Rita Girouard Mertig, MS, RNC, CNS, DE ,has taught nursing in a variety of programs and recently retired after 21 years from teaching in an associate degree nursing program in which she also taught nutrition. Rita also has had type 1 Diabetes for 25 years and has used an insulin pump for 15 years.