Awareness, Self-Care Measures, and Medication Adherence to Managing Diabetes Mellitus among Patients attending Colombo South Teaching Hospital, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a global health concern that is interfered with poor glycaemic control due to a disorder of carbohydrate metabolism. Therefore, this study assessed awareness, self-care measures, and medication adherence in managing DM among adult patients with DM attending Colombo South Teaching Hospital (CSTH), Sri Lanka. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among the patients who have been diagnosed with DM and utilized the simple random sampling method to reach the desired sample size. After obtaining ethical approval from the Ethics Review Committee, KAATSU International University, data was collected by using a semi-structured administrative questionnaire. Data was analyzed by using SPSS version 25. The study sample included 400 patients with DM who were attending CSTH. The majority were female (239, 59.8%), Sinhalese (350, 87.5%), and married (338, 84.5%). The mean age was 58.62 10.1 years.The majority was having a rst-degree relationship with diabetes (311, 77 .8%) and maternal relationship was common (159, 52.6%). Accordingly, 3.3% had good knowledge and 20.5% had moderate knowledge. The majority (76.3%) had poor knowledge of managing diabetics. According to the Diabetic Self-Management Questionnaire, the highest mean value (9.48 2.73) was reported for glucose management. Other self-care measures included diet control (7.32 2.06), physical activity (4.47 2.12), healthcare use (5.39 1.68), and overall diabetic management (1.39 1.16), and indicated poor self-care in those aspects. The mean value of medication adherence was 4.8. The marital status and having a bachelor’s degree relation with diabetics were associated with medication adherence at a 95% con dence interval. Majority (270, 67.5%) showed poor adherence to the use of anti-diabetics. Several patient empowerment programs and techniques focused on increasing diabetic health literacy are required.