Keywords: tertiary prevention, type 2 diabetes, attitude
Aim:
Diabetes is a chronic metabolic disease that has become an increasing public health problem worldwide. Prevention, diagnosis, and effective management of diabetes are of great importance for tertiary prevention. Diabetes attitude refers to individuals' approaches and attitudes towards managing and controlling diabetes. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the diabetes attitudes of diabetic patients.
Method:
Our study was conducted by reaching 270 patients who applied to Trakya University Health Research and Application Hospital Diabetes Outpatient Clinic between June 15, 2022, and September 15, 2022, had type 2 DM for at least 6 months, and agreed to participate in our study. All patients who applied constituted the population of our study. Data were collected with a questionnaire consisting of 22 questions questioning the sociodemographic characteristics of the participants, presence of additional chronic diseases, diabetes education, compliance with diet, exercise, blood glucose measurement, treatment type, presence of a person with diabetes in the family, frequency of control visits and 34 questions of the Diabetes Attitude Scale.
Results:
Of the participants, 51.1% were female and the mean age was 59.35±11.42 years. The mean score of the participants on the Diabetes Attitude Scale was 3.78±0.42 and 258 (95.6%) of the participants had a positive attitude while 12 (4.4%) had a negative attitude. In our study, it was found that demographic factors such as gender (p=0.001), marital status (p=0.013), occupation (p=0.039), region of residence (p=0.022), and exercise frequency interact with attitudes towards diabetes.
Conclusions:
Family physicians should identify their patients' attitudinal behaviors, such as accepting lifestyle changes, exercising regularly, adopting healthy eating habits, monitoring blood glucose levels, encouraging positive attitudes, and making recommendations to change negative attitudes in order to prevent complications within the scope of tertiary prevention.
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