The level of knowledge and attitude on insulin therapy in patients with diabetes mellitus in a teaching hospital of Southern India

AIM OF THE STUDY: To assess the level of knowledge and attitude on insulin therapy in patients with diabetes mellitus in a teaching hospital. OBJECTIVES: 1. To assess the level of knowledge and attitude on insulin therapy among patients with diabetes mellitus. 2. To find out the association between the knowledge and attitude on insulin therapy with the selected study variables. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a nonexperimental, cross-sectional study. A total of 100 participants were recruited from the outpatients and inpatients attending the department of general medicine and general surgery. Adult male and female with diabetes mellitus receiving insulin injection and willing to participate in the study were included in the study. The data was collected using 20 structured questionnaires to assess the level of knowledge and modified 4 point Likert scale was used, which contains 10 statements to assess the level of attitude on insulin therapy by interview method. RESULTS: It was observed from the results that the level of knowledge among the study participants was as follows: 4% of them had adequate knowledge, 44% had moderately adequate knowledge, and more than half (52%) of them had inadequate knowledge. The level of attitude among the study participants (27%) with diabetes mellitus had favorable attitude, more than half (69%) had moderately favorable attitude, and 4% had unfavorable attitude on insulin therapy. It is observed that there is no statistically significant correlation (r) =0.038, P = 0.707 between the level of knowledge and attitude on insulin therapy among patients with diabetes mellitus. CONCLUSION: This study showed that there was inadequate knowledge and unfavorable attitude among the diabetic patients regarding insulin therapy. The people with diabetes should receive ongoing need-based quality diabetic education by using innovative methods that is tailored to their needs, delivered by skilled healthcare providers.