Self-care practices among diabetes patients registered in a chronic disease clinic in Puducherry, South India

Abstract

Background: In management of diabetes, self-care plays an important role in prevention of complications. This study aims to find the proportion of diabetic patients following the recommended self-care practices in an urban area of Puducherry. Materials and Methods: Consecutive eligible patients registered in chronic disease clinic were interviewed using Summary of Diabetes Self Care Activities Score (SDSCA) questionnaire. Self-care practices were evaluated in domains of diet, physical activity, foot-care, adherence to medications and blood glucose monitoring. All domains were scored from the range of 0 to 7. Results: Totally 162 diabetic patients were interviewed. The mean (SD) age of participants was 57 (11.1) yrs. Among all domains, adherence to medication was the highest (95.6 %) followed by avoidance of selected food items (99.4%). Almost 78% of patients had their blood sugar checked at least once in the last three months. Only half of them (50.6%) had followed at least 20 minutes of leisure time physical activity. Except washing of foot (83.3%) all other foot care practices were less commonly (35-57%) followed. Conclusion: The study shows that higher level of compliance to self-care practices in terms of taking drugs and diet but self-care in other domains such as foot care is alarmingly low.

Self-care practices among type II diabetics in rural area of Kancheepuram district, Tamil Nadu

“…showed that the prevalence of diabetic medication adherence was 95%, which was significantly higher compared to our study. [ 24 ] The regional and rural-urban differences could have been the reason for this difference.…”

“…75.2% of the study population had satisfactory blood sugar monitoring which is similar to the results reported by Selvaraj et al . [ 24 ] and study done in Mangalore. [ 20 ]…”

Self-care practices among known type 2 diabetic patients in Haldwani, India: a community based cross-sectional study

“…However Selvaraj et al in Puducherry had found high level of medication adherence as 95.6% patients had taken recommended medication for at least 6 days in a week, which might be ascribed to facility based study setting. 17 Blood glucose monitoring is now becoming more adhered to due to availability of home available monitoring devices. Self-testing for recommended number of times was done by 20.2% in present study, which is consistent with study in Gujarat.…”

Structured diabetes education program for improving self-care behavior in primary care settings of Puducherry: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial

“…[ 9 12 ] Recent studies from India showed compliance levels of 8% to 45% in checking feet. [ 11 13 14 ] At the end of the intervention, an additional improvement of 1.95 days/week in SDSCA mean score and 33.5% increase in compliance for checking of feet was observed in intervention group compared to control group. This concurs with previous studies from Pondicherry (increase of 2.1 days/week)[ 15 ] and Iran (improvement of 2.9 days/week).…”