Knowledge and self-care practices regarding diabetes among patients with Type 2 diabetes in Rural Sullia, Karnataka: A community-based, cross-sectional study

INTRODUCTION: Diabetes is a lifestyle disease which requires a multipronged approach for its management, wherein patient has an important role to play in terms of self-care practices, which can be taught to them by educational programs. To develop such an educational program, a baseline assessment of knowledge and self-care practices of patients, needs to be made. The two objectives of the study were to estimate the knowledge of diabetic patients regarding the disease and its complications, and to estimate the knowledge and adherence to self-care practices concerned with Type 2 diabetes mellitus. METHODS: The study was conducted in rural Sullia, Karnataka, from January 2014 to May 2015. The sample size was calculated to be 400, and the sampling method was probability proportionate to sampling size. RESULT: Majority of them were married males of Hindu religion and belonged to upper middle class. Only 24.25% of them had good knowledge. Among the self-care practices, foot care was the most neglected area. CONCLUSION: Only one-fourth of the study population had a good knowledge toward diabetes. Adherence to some of the self-care practices was also poor. Government policies may help in creating guidelines on diabetes management, funding community programs for public awareness, availability of medicines, and diagnostic services to all sections of the community. Continuing education programs for health-care providers and utilization of mass media to the fullest potential may also help in creating awareness.