Empowerment-Based Interventions in Patients with Diabetes: A Review Study

Diabetes is a chronic and progressive disease that due to its nature, it needs the cooperation of patient in the treatment process. This disease has been developed with industrialization and urbanization. Patient empowerment program is an effective program to improve the function of patients with diabetes. The purpose of this study, was the evaluation of empowerment-based interventions in patients with diabetes.
We conducted a comprehensive overview in internatioanl and Iranian databases including Science Direct, PubMed, Cochrane library, Scopus, Iranmedex,and Google Scholar with the keywords of “empowerment”, “empowerment approach”, “empowerment program”, “patient empowerment”, “empowerment and diabetes” and “diabetic patients” from 2000 to 2014. After considering inclusion and exclusion criteria, 16 articles were selected.
The results indicated that there was a lack of existence of a theoretical framework of empowerment, lack of attention to all dimensions of empowerment and the impact of demographic variables on empowerment of patients, and lack of programme follow- up.
Due to the limitations specified in empowerment interventions, it is suggested that interventions in diabetic patients should pay attention to all dimensions of empowerment.