Capillary blood glucose monitoring is an essential component of diabetes care. Blood glucose tests provide important information about how the body is controlling blood glucose metabolism, and the effect of glucose-lowering medicines, illness and stress.
The nurse should consider the rationale for testing blood glucose each time they perform a test, and reflect on the result, taking into consideration the patient’s blood glucose target range and recommended care guidelines.
Blood glucose testing times and testing frequency should be planned to suit the glucose-lowering medicine regimen and the clinical situation.
Clinical skills articles can help update your practice and ensure it remains evidence based. Apply this article to your practice. Reflect on and write a short account of:
What you have gained from this article.
How this article will influence your practice when monitoring blood glucose.
Subscribers can upload their reflective accounts at:
Nursing Standard. 30, 22, 36-39. doi: 10.7748/ns.30.22.36.s45
Correspondence Peer reviewAll articles are subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software.
Received: 23 January 2015
Accepted: 21 May 2015
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