Nurses' experiences of conflicting encounters in diabetes care

Aim: To describe nurses' experiences of encounters with patients in diabetes care. Methods: Focus-group interviews with 17 nurses about their experiences of caring for patients with diabetes. Interviews were analysed by qualitative content analysis. Results: Four themes described conflicts in their encounters with patients, disclosing a complex professional role as a diabetes nurse. Implementing guidelines at the same time as being patient-centred was found to be problematic. Nurses further viewed medical knowledge as being more important than life experience of diabetes. The nurses' comments were distanced from, and judgemental about, patients as a collective. Finally, the nurses felt comfortable in expert roles, but not in equal and mutual relationships with patients. Conclusion: The interviews identified a feeling of frustration over conflicting demands between different goals and ideologies for diabetes care. These conflicts may also arise from the difficulty of integrating medical goals and patients' life experiences of illness.