|
| Themes | Subthemes | Quotations from focus group and individual interviews |
|
| Cognitive component | Knowledge about diabetes | “…the pancreas doesn’t produce enough insulin, which is needed by the body, so blood sugar levels rise. Well…the symptoms…um…can be drinking a lot, going to the toilet a lot, mouth…breath changes, urine becomes acetous.” (II21) |
| Knowledge about diabetes management | “Considering type 1 [diabetes], I understand that insulin needs to be replaced. This can be done via a pen or a pump.” (II11) |
|
| Affective component | Toward child living with T1D | “I can see her, poor thing, with the pump and the sensor. Her trousers slip down a little bit and I can see the little red dots on her, and it tugs at my heartstrings that God lets a little 5-year-old face these kind of obstacles.” (II4) |
| Toward diabetes management | “I’ll tell you that it bothers us quite often. When we’re here at work we’re studying and concentrating, and P’s [the child with T1D] device starts beeping… So, unfortunately we often feel that. 1: It’s difficult 2: Tiring 1: A burden!” (FG2) |
|
| Behavioral component | Perception and attention | “Here at school, if I see that R’s eyes [the child with T1D] become a bit dizzy, I ask him immediately.” (FG1) |
| Responsibility | “This child is brought to the school, she spends her time between 8 am till 5 pm here, so during that time I’m responsible for her. And if I’m responsible for her, then my job is to learn the things that are necessary for her.” (FG2) |
| Integration | “So that it’s very important to talk about it with the other children. Using tales, puppets, we can strengthen the connection [between the child with T1D and his peers]” (II3) |
| Flexibility in studies | “It turned out that he had diabetes and he ‘slipped’ [failed one school year]. And the question was how we are going to manage to get him to graduation. So, in this case we handled it differently. There wasn’t a date for the exam, he could take the exam when he was ready for it.” (FG1) |
| Keeping contact | “We were in touch with the parents every single day. They told us how long the child sleeps, how we have to wake him/her up, what size of portions he should eat, etc.” (FG1) |
| Blood sugar control | “It happens that when their blood sugar level drops, we give them some cookies, some grape glucose tablets so that they don’t start to fall into hypo [hypoglycemia].” (II4) |
| Orientation about diabetes | “When I found out that we were going to have [in the group] a little girl like that, I went to the [name of the foundation] Foundation’s lecture before she joined the group, so that I could have some theoretical and practical experience of what it entailed.” (II4) |
| Tutoring | “Let’s think about the situation with glasses. Let’s draw a parallel. If a child starts wearing glasses, a smart teacher says: “Wow, you’ve got such cool glasses” and “Wow it is so good!”. And we prepare the child for this, right? We might even say that the glasses are very fragile, so we have to take good care of them…So, it won’t draw too much attention if you introduce it properly.” (II5) |
|
