Diabetes is called xiao-ke in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) . TCM has been used to treat diabetes for thousands of years, and the medical system is based on extensive clinical experience. This study aimed to review the current status and future issues of the application of TCM in nursing care of diabetes. We reviewed Chinese papers published from 1984 to September 2014 using the keywords diabetes, Chinese medicine, and nursing to search the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI)

more »

... atabase. This yielded 418 candidates, and we fully analyzed 170 relevant research articles. Through this literature review, we summarize the current status of diabetes nursing in TCM as follows: studies on diabetes nursing with TCM increase yearly, studies on the non-diagnosis of diabetes are rare, application of diabetes nursing in TCM has mostly been conducted in hospital settings, studies on diabetes nursing using TCM in China are in an initial stage, variations in diabetes nursing with TCM are abundant, and conventional diabetes nursing that includes TCM is more effective. Future issues of diabetes nursing in TCM include: expanding the use of diabetes nursing with TCM to communities, using TCM constitution nursing to prevent diabetes, and detailed examination of nursing care of diabetes using a combination of TCM and Western medicine.