To explore the effect of health education based on Swanson's caring theory in community elderly diabetic patients.

From August 2019 to August 2020, convenience sampling was used to select 103 elderly diabetic patients in the two communities of Zhimaying and Huaqiao Road in Nanjing as the research object. The 51 patients enrolled from August 2019 to January 2020 were set as the control group, and the 52 patients enrolled from February to August 2020 were set as the observation group. The control group implemented the routine health education, and the observation group conducted the health education based on Swanson's caring theory on this basis. The self-management ability and blood glucose metabolism indexes of the two groups of patients were compared before the intervention and 3 months after the intervention.

Before the intervention, there were no significant differences in the self-management ability and blood glucose metabolism indexes between the two groups of patients (P>0.05) . After 3 months of intervention, the score of self-management ability of the observation group was higher than that of the control group, and higher than that before the intervention, and the differences were statistically significant (P<0.05) . The fasting blood glucose, 2-hour postprandial blood glucose and glycosylated hemoglobin of the observation group were lower than those of the control group, and the differences were statistically significant (P<0.05) .

Health education based on Swanson's caring theory can improve the self-management ability of elderly diabetic patients in the community and improve their blood glucose control. It is worthy of clinical promotion.

Diabetes mellitus; Aged; Patients; Swanson's caring theory