Background: The process of learning to live with an illness is complex. By better understanding the learning process for persons with diabetes in the early stage of the illness, the role of the health care can be shown.

Aim: To reach an understanding of how learning to live with diabetes is experienced in the first 2 months after diagnosis.

Method: A qualitative descriptive design was used, and interviews were conducted. Thirteen participants with a recent diagnosis of diabetes were included and asked to narrate about their experience of living with diabetes. Qualitative inductive content analysis was used.

Findings: Four themes emerged: ‘taken over by a new reality’, ‘the body plays a role in life’, ‘different ways of learning’ and ‘the healthcare service as a necessary partner’.

Conclusion: People with short-term experience of the illness gained knowledge through personal resources such as their own experience and self-reflection. The learning process includes an inner dialogue between the self, the body and the life. Participants were concerned with grasping a new reality and understanding a different self and body where lifestyle changes and uncertainty were present. When health care was accessible and sensitive to their needs, those with short-term experience of diabetes chose the staff as key players in the early stages of their life with diabetes.

Aim: This paper is a report of a study of illuminating the meaning of ‘learning to live with diabetes’ 3 years after being diagnosed.

Background: A changed situation, for example, in relation to living with diabetes, raises a need to understand. How time for experience contributes to this learning process for people living with diabetes is not yet well understood. It would therefore seem valuable to ask people, who have had diabetes over a similar length of time, to narrate their experience in relation to daily life situations in order to understand better how learning is established.

Design: The study has a qualitative design.

Methods: A life world approach was used, with interviews being conducted with 13 people who had been diagnosed with diabetes 3 years earlier. Data were collected in 2007, and analyses were conducted using a phenomenological-hermeneutic method.

Findings: How a person experiences the physical body was found to be crucial in the learning process. If the body with its signals is understood it can be a tool for experiencing and understanding the world and oneself. Feeling insecure about one’s own needs, and not trusting or understanding bodily signs, made participants dependent on others to make decisions for them.

Conclusion: This study showed that duration of illness was ‘not’ of importance for the understanding of living with diabetes. Living with diabetes 3 years after being diagnosed meant to experience both an overall balance in one’s existence and a daily struggle.

Background: Learning involves acquiring new knowledge and skills, and changing our ways of thinking, acting, and feeling. Learning in relation to living with diabetes is a lifelong process where there is limited knowledge of how it is experienced and established over time. It was considered important to explore how learning was developed over time for persons living with diabetes.

Aim: The aim of the study was to identify patterns in learning when living with diabetes, from recently being diagnosed, and over a 3-year period.

Materials and methods: A longitudinal qualitative descriptive design was used. Thirteen participants, with both type I and type II diabetes, were interviewed at three different occasions during a 3-year period. Qualitative content analysis was used in different steps in order to distinguish patterns.

Findings: Five main patterns of learning were identified. Two of the patterns (I and II) were characterized by gradually becoming comfortable living with diabetes, whereas for one pattern (IV) living with diabetes became gradually more difficult. For pattern V living with diabetes was making only a limited impact on life, whereas for Pattern III there was a constant management of obstacles related to illness. The different patterns in the present study showed common and different ways of learning and using different learning strategies at different timespans.

Conclusion: The present study showed that duration of illness is not of importance for how far a person has come in his own learning process. A person-centered care is needed to meet the different and changing needs of persons living with diabetes in relation to learning to live with a lifelong illness.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: The aim of the study was to illuminate the meanings of trigger situations experienced in everyday life when learning to live with diabetes.

BACKGROUND: Adults become active learners when faced with situations they do not know how to manage, triggering a need to understand something in a different way than before. Knowing more about experiential learning for persons living with diabetes is important for understanding how learning can be supported by health care.

DESIGN: A life-world approach with a phenomenological hermeneutical method, inspired by the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur.

METHODS: This method was used for interpreting transcriptions of interviews and consists of three stages: naïve understanding, structural analysis and a comprehensive understanding. Participants (n = 13), with either type I or type II diabetes, were interviewed on three different occasions over a three-year period after being diagnosed with diabetes.

RESULTS: When learning to live with diabetes, the meanings of trigger situations were described as 'the unpredictable body heightens insecurity with awareness of one's own dependability', 'losing control in unsustainable situations' and 'encumbered by vulnerability and temporality in earlier familiar situations'.

CONCLUSION:The meanings of trigger situations were to lose the smooth, unreflected way of managing an everyday life situation, interlaced with feelings of lost control of how to live with new insights of being vulnerable. Trigger situations meant an opportunity for learning, as well as being demanding, unplanned and with limited freedom of choice. Trigger situations presented life and body as unpredictable.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: If healthcare professionals can identify the worries and questions raised in trigger situations, knowledge gaps can be identified and reflected on to stimulate learning.