Why is understanding the service user's point of view important in health care, and what can be done to take this point of view into account? Discuss with reference to diabetes care.

Essay by ayesha1978University, Bachelor'sA-, June 2009

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The term 'service user' has been widely adopted to identify the person receiving care.

It highlights the idea of a 'service' being 'done' to you rather than just passively receiving it. To be effective, health care needs to take into account the service user viewpoint.

In chapter 2 (Unit 2 pp. 77-86), we have carried on looking at Anwar's story.

Anwar is a 54 years old grocer migrated from Pakistan to the Midlands in UK, suffering diabetes.

Living with any long-term illness can be challenging. The service user may encounter lots of different obstacles that can be detrimental to the efficacy of ones care.

In Anwar's story we can see his struggles to follow the guidelines given from Nurse Richards.

Patients suffering from diabetes are normally advised to increase their physical activities and to eat a healthy diet.

Anwar told Nurse Richards that he found it hard to follow the diet and exercise guidelines because they did not match with his cultural background.

Also Anwar's wife cannot read English and could not follow the diet plan given to Anwar. For those reasons Anwar diabetes was getting worse.

In a study made by Julia Lawton and her associates (Julia Lawton and associates 2006, Resource 2 pp.13-17), the Pakistani and South Asians were more at risk of diabetes than the general population. In fact the disease was at least four times more common among South Asians living in Britain than in the general population.

This study suggests that there is a poor level of diabetes knowledge within the South Asian patients. This could be due to a number of factors, as the study explained:

-Language barriers;

-Different diet due to the culture being different;

-Lack of physical exercise due to cultural taboos about exposing the bodies to the opposite gender and time...