The nursing roles and the implementation of communication approach for health literacy promotion in mothers with Gestational Diabetes Mellitus

Abstract

Maternal health literacy is the intellectual and social skills that determine mothers’ motivation and ability to acquire understanding and to use information for promoting and maintaining wellbeing of their own and newborns. Mothers with low health literacy may have improper health behaviors resulting in negative health consequences for themselves and newborns, especially the ones who are diagnosed with gestational diabetes. This is due to dangerous complications for them and newborns such as preeclampsia, urinary tract infection, vaginal Monelia infections and difficult labor. Besides, those with poor diabetes mellitus control in the early stage of pregnancy will also have a higher risk of miscarriage and of congenital anomalies in newborns. Nurses are the first to assess mothers’ health status so they play an important role in diabetes risk assessment at the beginning of antenatal care. This leads to communication approach for planning of healthcare programs to control blood sugar level within normal range and to encourage mothers to adjust their dietary habits and physical activities without the need of medication for blood sugar level control. Therefore, there should be communication approach for health literacy promotion in mothers with gestational diabetes mellitus paving the way to good nursing practice that helps monitoring and providing healthcare programs as well as reducing complications and health-related costs of future mothers and newborns.