The effectiveness of individualized health education to control blood sugar for diabetic patients at Bangsai Hospital, Ayutthaya province

Abstract

Background: Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease. It is the cause of serious health problems and direct impact on patients. It reduces quality of life and lead to various systemic complications. Moreover, it increases the family expense which render to out-of-pocket payment for healthcare and increase the loss of government health expenditure. The researcher therefore interested to study on the effectiveness of individualized health education on glycemic control of the diabetic patients. The quality and efficacy of diabetic care could be simply indicated by the normal range of blood sugar which is benefit for prevention and reduction of the complication that may occur in the later.

Objective: To study the effectiveness of individualized health education to control blood sugar for diabetic patient at Bangsai Hospital.

Materials and Methods: Uncontrollable glycemic level patients who were cared at the outpatient department of Bangsai Hospital were participated in this study. The quasi-experimental research with one group pretest-posttest design were conducted. Health care behavior data were collected using the questionnaires and the blood sugar levels were simultaneously measured before and after individualized health education. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics including percentage arithmetic mean and standard deviation. The inferential statistic was executed using paired samples t-test. The study period was performed on April to August 2016.

Results : All 30 diabetic patients included 19 females (63.7%) and 11 males (33.3%) which the most had the aged over 60 year olds (53.4%). Before the individualized health education, they had the mean score of knowledge on diabetes mellitus at the moderate level of 69.9% and mean score of self-care behaviors at the level of 2.23. The mean of fasting blood sugar (FBS) and the mean of hemoglobin A1c level (HbA1C) were 175 mg/dl and 8.2%, respectively. After individualized health education, overall parameters were improved. The mean of knowledge and self-care behaviors increased to 75.7% and 2.47, respectively.  The mean score of FBS and HbA1C were decreased to 148 mg/dl and 7.6%, respectively. The statistical analysis showed that before and after individualized health education were significant difference with p-value of 0.05.

Conclusions: The individualized health education in uncontrollable glycemic level diabetic patients help to improve patient knowledges, self-care behaviors, and decreased the blood sugar level.