Introduction:

Self-care activities are learned as the individual matures, and are affected by cultural beliefs, habits, customs within the family and the society. Age, stages of development and health status can affect the individual’s ability to perform self-care activities.

Objective:

To describe Dorothea E. Orem’s self-care deficit theory’s adaptation to people with diabetes mellitus complicated by neuropathic ulcer.

Methods:

Systematic bibliographic review for carrying out a reflexive critical analysis of the content of original and review articles. The search strategy adopted was the use of keywords or descriptors, connected through the Boolean operator AND. The search was carried out in the databases SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online), Ebsco (Elton Bryson Stephens Company), LILACS (Latin American Literature and Caribeem Ciências da Saúde), and MEDLINE/Pubmed (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online), during the month of January 2017.

Conclusions:

The relevance is supported regarding the self-care of diabetic people with complicated neuropathic ulcer in the community. The lack is shown of specific studies of this type from the nursing perspective. The achievement represented by raising awareness about self-care as required by the person affected with diabetes mellitus with complicated neuropathic ulcer for improving or maintaining the state of health, through the possibilities offered to the community nurse.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )