Title:Are Our Diabetic Patients Adherent to the Treatment?
Volume: 17
Issue: 8
Author(s): Avinash Kumar*, Dhruv Indiresh Hejmady, Unnikrishnan B., Rekha Thapar, Nithin Kumar, Ramesh Holla , Darshan B.B., Vishnu Shetty , I.S. Divya Charitha and Rakshith Hegde K.
Affiliation:
- Department of Community Medicine, Manipal Tata Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Jamshedpur-831017, Jharkhand,India
Keywords:
Adherence, self-care management, medical adherence rating scale, treatment, diabetes, non-communicable
diseases.
Abstract: Aim: To estimate the adherence to treatment among type 2 diabetic patients.
Background: Treatment adherence is a complex process that is controlled by multiple factors.
Lack of treatment adherence is common with patients who suffer from type 2 diabetes and is becoming a very prevalent problem especially with the patients who suffer from non-communicable
diseases (NCD) worldwide.
Objective: To estimate the adherence to treatment among type 2 diabetic patients and the perception and practice of self-management among them.
Methods: A cross-sectional study using a questionnaire was conducted amongst the patients of Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore, a coastal city of southern India. The questionnaire consisted of
Medical Adherence Rating Scale (MARS) to assess how adherent the patient is to the treatment
and the Diabetes Self-care Questionnaire (DSMQ) for assessing the various self-care practices employed by diabetic patients. The data obtained was entered and the analysis was done by using the
Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) version 25.0.
Results: The study involved 95 patients and the mean age was found to be 50.71 ± 12.633 years.
More than 60% of the study population were male and 78.9% were literate. Nearly half of the patients (49.5%) had been on treatment for a duration of >5 years. Eighty-two percent population
(82.1%) were adherent to their medications. Adherence was found to be nearly eighty percent
(79.5%) among the literates.
Conclusion: Adherence was more among the males as compared to the females. Most patients in
the study had been adherent to their medications prescribed to them. Most of them were on oral
drugs only. The majority of the patients who had diabetes mellitus were found to have inadequate
self-care management for diabetes mellitus.
