An Integrated Review of the Application of Orem's Self-Care Theory in Care of Diabetic Patients

Diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases that need a lot of care. Theories play an important role in improving the quality of care, and Orem’s self-care theory is pioneering in this field. Therefore, this study aimed to conduct an integrated review of the application of Orem’s theory in the care of diabetic patients.

The present study is an integrated review study of articles published from 2010 to 2022 that were collected from databases including SID, Magiran, Iranmedex, Irandoc, ProQuest, Google Scholar, and PubMed using the keywords, such as Orem, self-care, diabetes, Orem model and their Latin equivalents. The study procedure included five stages of text search, text selection, data evaluation, data extraction, and data classification in studies on the application of Orem’s self-care model on diabetes.

The initial search results included 243 articles. A total number of 14 articles were selected and included in the study after the careful examination of the titles, abstracts, and texts of the collected articles. The majority of studies have been conducted in Iran. All studies were interventional and five articles had a clinical trial design. Moreover, the studied variables included the main components of Orem’s theory, quality of life, laboratory factors such as blood sugar or glycosylated hemoglobin, adherence to treatment, self-efficacy, and peripheral neuropathy. All the studies were performed on the adult population and interventions were often conducted in the form of training sessions. In all the studies, interventions had a positive and significant effect on the variables under study.

Considering the positive results of interventions based on Orem’s self-care theory on the consequences of diabetic patients, it is recommended to remove the barriers to the application of the theory in the clinic. Furthermore, efforts should be made to translate knowledge and support upstream organizations in this regard. It is also suggested to pay attention to the acute complications of diabetes, study this disease in the pediatric population, and perform interventions with strong plans for researchers interested in this field.