Self-care Assessment in Patients with Diabetes in Qom city in 2013

Background & Aims of the Study: Diabetes is considered a major concern in thethird millennia A.D. and is increasing day by day. This disease shows a highprevalence in Iran as well. Meanwhile, self-care is the best solution for controllingand preventing diabetes. This study aimed at self-care assessment in patients withdiabetes in Qom city in 2013.Materials & Methods: A total of 251 diabetes patients referring to Qom cityDiabetes Association were chosen through simple accidental method. Twoquestionnaires including demographic and SDSCA standard questionnaires andalso an information paper were used in this study. The questionnaires werecompleted through an organized interview in order to achieve the best accuracy.The data was analyzed by SPSS18 software by less than 0.05 significance.Results: The results showed that 32.99% of the subjects had no self-care activityagainst diabetes and only 7.97% of the subjects followed self-care activitythe week. FBS rate among the patients was 157.74 mg/dl and HbA1c rate was7.74 mg/dl, and self-care score was also 46.53. The results showed an adversesignificant relation between self-care and FBS plus HbA1c rates.Conclusions: Diabetic Patients lacked a desirable self-care condition in such amanner that patients didn’t take care of self-care activities including: having adiet, doing enough physical activity, controlling blood sugar, taking care of theirfeet, and also consuming drugs or injecting insulin, completely and regularly.Consequently, FBS and HbA1c rates were undesirable in the subjects.

Keywords:

DiabetesSelf-careFasting blood sugarHbA1c