Childhood and Diabetes
“Children must incorporate the illness into their daily life, but it is not easy at first. At the age of 4-6 years old they may feel different from their colleagues and friends. To include the illness into their daily life activities and avoid stigmatization have been the key factors that pushed us to create this story” Norma Grau.
Teo inicia la escuela después de su debut diabético y algunas cosas han cambiado para él. Antes de participar en la fiesta de bienvenida tiene que hacerse un control de glucosa y ponerse la insulina. ¿Cómo va a contárselo a sus amigos y compañeros de clase?
It so happens that a couple of the Care Challenge selected projects are conducted by nurses in Barcelona, Spain. So the WeObservatory team picked Barcelona as the first target for a field trip.
Firstly, we were kindly invited by the nurses of the Programa 5′ project of the pediatric hospital Sant Juan de Deu to meet with the nursing team, discuss their projects and visit the hospital. To remind you , the Programa 5′ is a continuing education initiative through the implementation of short (5 minutes) interactive and online teaching actions for nurses. 
The first planned step in our collaboration is to update and expand the Technical Manual for Nursing Videos in order to make the methodology transferable and help other nurses in other hospitals reproduce the project. Pictures of the hospital are posted in our Photo Gallery, check them out!
Secondly, we met with the wonderful nurse Norma Grau , author of the Teo the Duckling story for Diabetic children, and illustrator Cristina Serrat. 
As we communicated in a previous post, we met to discuss the possibilities of making an animated version of the story as well as a version customized for girls, Thea the Ducklinette. We are happy to say that he consensus has been reached and we now have connected Norma Grau and Cristina Serrat with the creative team of the ONIDEA studio, who will be producing the animated version of Teo the Duckling. 
Here , on the photo on the right, you can see the ONIDEA team holding the Zero Mothers Die pink phone.
Finally, we met with Lisa Darsch MSN RN, founder of CEO Collaborative Forum, that has kindly offered her expretise and advice on our projects, Zero Mothers Die in particular. For those who don’t know : our own Véronique Thouvenot, the WeObservatory director, is also the co-founder of the ZMD project, hence the occasional overlapping on the subject in our posts.
Stay tuned for more news and pictures !
It is never easy to speak to children about a disease. Especially when this disease makes them feel very different from all the other children, as is the case with diabetes.
Norma Grau, a nurse from Barcelona, has written a story for diabetic children – Teo the Duckling – that would help them learn in an easy and educative way that they mustn’t feel different or ashamed for being diabetic. 
“Children must incorporate the illness into their daily life, but it is not easy at first. Various vital infancy stages have to be taken into account when helping them with the educational therapy. At the age of 4-6 years old they may feel different from their colleagues and friends, especially when doing check-ups as well as giving themselves insulin dose injections. To include the illness into their daily life activities plus avoiding stigmatization have been the key to develop our project”, says Norma Grau.
The nurse also had the story superbly illustrated by her colleague, Cristina Serrat Gómez, making it very appealing to children.
This story was shared for the first via Care Challenge by
Norma Grau and was then selected both by Connecting Nurses and the WeObservatory. Here at the WeObservatory we are planning to help the nurse further develop her idea : during 2014/2015 we will contribute to the creation of another story customized for girls. We also plan to create an animated version of the stories. We will keep you updated on this project through our blog.
The story currently exists in three languages.
Click to access the PDF versions : English, Castellano and Catalán.
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