Self-care practices among adult patients newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus in selected level five hospitals in Kenya

Abstract

Background: Self-care practices refers to patient’s real-life application of the knowledge acquired on diabetes management. In Kenya,  the prevalence of diabetes related complications has been on the rise and this has been linked to poor self-care practices.

Objective: To determine the self-care practices among adult patients newly diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM).

Materials and Methods: Descriptive cross-sectional design was adopted. A total of 124 patients newly diagnosed with T2DM were  randomly recruited from the selected hospitals. Data was collected using a questionnaire modified from the Diabetes Self-Management  Questionnaire (DSMQ). Descriptive analysis was done to generate frequencies while chi-square was used to assess association between variables (p≤ 0.05 at 95% CI).

Results: Of 124 respondents, 70 (56.5%) were females with most 35 (28.2%) belonging to the age group  between 60-69 years. Regarding the duration of T2DM since diagnosis, 45 (36.3%) reported that they were diagnosed at least four months ago. Poor self-care practices were noted in 69 (55.6%) of the respondents, with the mean and standard deviation being 4.92 (±1.10), mean  score ranging from 0 to 10. However, there was no significant association between self-care practices and respondents’  characteristics.

Conclusion and Recommendation: Self-care practices among the respondents was poor, hence the need for clinicians to  conduct a needs assessment among patients newly diagnosed with T2DM in order to identify gaps in their self-care. This will also help  in developing evidenced based diabetes education materials.