Diabetes is a disease that occurs due to insufficient production of insulin hormone, deficiency or inability to use the insulin hormone produced. Diabetes is an important disease whose incidence is increasing every year, negatively affecting quality of life and causing morbidity and mortality. According to the 2021 data of the National Diabetes Federation, approximately 10.5% of the adult population worldwide has diabetes and almost half of these patients are not aware of their disease. Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of diabetes and accounts for approximately 90% of the entire population. Many factors such as unfavorable living conditions, low socioeconomic level, obesity and advanced age cause type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes, which is the most common chronic disease seen in geriatric patients and also a serious life-threatening disease, is becoming increasingly common in the elderly population with the prolongation of life expectancy. Aging is a process that leads to many anatomical and physiological changes in individuals and brings with it the risks of various pathological conditions. With this process, there is an increase in the incidence of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, which causes psychological and physiologic decline requiring long-term treatments, close follow-up and serious care. In addition to factors such as lifestyle changes and diabetes awareness, insulin therapy also plays a very important role in the management of diabetes. Insulin treatment is the primary option in case of oral hypoglycemic drug failure or development of diabetes-induced vascular complications. In order to eliminate side effects and have glycemic control in insulin treatment, patients should be knowledgeable about their diseases and insulin treatments, and in addition, they should be competent and have a positive perspective about insulin injection administration. The anxiety experienced by patients during insulin injection may negatively affect emotional well-being and glycemic control. According to the results of a study, it was reported that approximately 48.4% of patients with diabetes experienced noncompliance with treatment because of the pain they would experience during insulin injection and the thought of not being able to endure this pain. In the light of today's technological developments, various methods are applied to patients to divert attention during treatment. Virtual reality and stress ball applications are some of these applications. Thanks to the distraction technique, attention is diverted away from the pain and the severity in the perception of pain is reduced. Nurses play an important role in the management, implementation and rehabilitation of the treatment process of patients. Due to many procedures such as various injection applications, invasive interventions and care applications, nurses are in close interaction with patients and take important responsibilities in the management of many conditions such as pain, fear and anxiety that occur in the patient during this interaction. In some studies in the literature, it is known that virtual reality goggles and stress ball applications are used during dressing changes in patients with burns, painful invasive interventions, chemotherapy applications, bronchoscopy, cystoscopy and hemodialysis. However, there is no study in the literature examining the effect of virtual reality and stress ball applications on pain, anxiety level and injection satisfaction during insulin injection in geriatric patients with type 2 diabetes. This study is thought to contribute to the literature by filling this gap.
