The Level of Diabetes Knowledge and Related Factors among Patients with Diabetes Mellitus in Hyderabad, India

Abstract

Diabetes has become the fourth leading cause of death in most developed countries and will be one of the most challenging health problems worldwide in the 21st century. This study investigated on to what is exact knowledge of the diabetic patients regarding diabetes mellitus and to analyze what are the factors to influence level of the patients in Hyderabad. This study was conducted at CARE hospital, Nizamss institute of medical sciences (NIMS hospital) and Magna hospital in Hyderabad. Descriptive research design was used to recruit a convenient sample of 200 hospitalized adult patients with diabetes mellitus during the period of 1st July 2014 to middle of August 2014. Data was collected through face-to-face interview using the brief diabetes knowledge test (Michigan diabetes knowledge test)

it is composed of 23 multiple choice questions to assess general the scores of DM knowledge, insulin knowledge, and the total DM knowledge. Simple descriptive statistics (frequency, mean, and percentage) were used to describe the study variables. Results showed that 200 diabetic patients participated in this study (100 men and 100 women). Their age ranged from 20 to 80 years. The majority (81%) were married. The overall scores of the total sample were low. General diabetes knowledge was 64 ± 2.69 out of 18, insulin knowledge was 3.48 ± 1.92 out of 7, and total knowledge was 11.12 ± 4.11 out of 23. Men scored higher than women in the general diabetes knowledge (8.19 vs. 7.09), insulin knowledge (3.74 vs. 3.23), and total DM knowledge (11.93 vs. 10.32). Moreover, there were no significant differences found between patients with type I and type II diabetes, age, duration of diabetes, religion and marital status in the study group. The majority of the patients answered incorrectly about diabetic ketoacidosis, glycosylated hemoglobin, and insulin reaction related questions. Diabetic patients in this study had low level of diabetes knowledge, which in turn will limit their involvement in the self-management behaviors of diabetes. Keywords: Diabetes mellitus, diabetes knowledge, Hyderabad, India.