Knowledge, attitudes and practice of self-administration of insulin by patients with diabetes mellitus followed up at the General Hospital (Teaching), Kandy.

Abstract

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is recognized as one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. Most patients with type 2 diabetes eventually fail to respond adequately to oral hypoglycemic drugs and require insulin therapy. The present study was carried out to assess knowledge, attitude and practice of Self Administration of Insulin (SAI) among a cohort of 280 patients attending diabetic clinic of general hospital (Teaching) Kandy. Patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus attending the diabetic clinic at the general hospital (Teaching) Kandy within the period of July to November, 2015 were used for the study. Data were collected through a pre-tested interviewer administered questionnaire prepared in both Sinhala and Tamil media. The age of the participants ranged between 18 and 55 years. Of 280 patients, 173(61%) were females while 107 (38%) were males. Knowledge assessment on Self administration of Insulin revealed that 76 (27%) of the participants possessed poor knowledge on SAI while 166 (59%) possessed an average knowledge. Thirty eight (13.6%) possessed good knowledge on SAI. This study showed that the knowledge on SAI correlated well with educational level, occupation, nationality and monthly income while the attitude of the patients on SAI correlated with educational level, nationality and duration of insulin usage. It was further revealed that a vast majority of the participants was in the habit of changing their injection site. Furthermore, it was observed that most of them frequently used abdominal wall as the site of insulin administration. This study concludes that majority of the diabetic patients participated in the study possessed average knowledge on SAI. Nearly 52% of the patients exhibited a positive attitude of the patients with diabetes on SAI. These findings of the present study highlight the importance of health education programmes on insulin therapy in order to improve the knowledge on self-administration of insulin.