Poster Presentation Australian Diabetes Society and the Australian Diabetes Educators Association Annual Scientific Meeting 2017

The impact of patient education (using PITS model) on glycaemic control among type 2 diabetes patients in Sri Lanka. (#339)

Bulathsinghalage Poornima Reshamie Cooray 1 , Patrick Anthony Ball 2 , Hana Morrissey 2 , Eisha Indumane Waidyarathne 3
  1. School of Psychological and Clinical Sciences, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
  2. School of Pharmacy, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, United Kingdom
  3. Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ruhuna, Galle, Sri Lanka

Introduction

Type 2 diabetes mellitus and its complications is increasingly prevalent in Sri Lanka, imposing a serious health issue. There are no known studies conducted in Sri Lanka, to assess the effectiveness of one-to-one diabetes management education delivered by allied health professionals. The patient education designed was based on model for glycaemic control with the assessment of knowledge improvement was conducting utilising the Health Education Impact Questionnaire translated to Sinhalese (heiQTM).

Objectives

This study examined the impact of a culturally appropriate, health-education program on improving outcomes of Sri Lankan Type 2 diabetes mellitus patients, using the heiQTM, which was translated into the Sinhala language and investigated the association between health literacy and glycaemic control in the study population.

Design and methods

Health-education session was delivered to the cases group (sub-groups A and B) at baseline, and then repeated sub-group B only at six and 12 months. The improvements in knowledge and glycaemic control together with other biomarkers were measured using the heiQTM, laboratory testing and by the investigator. 

Results

Education intervention has been associated with significant improvement in glycaemic control (16.3%), and other biomarkers. The translated heiQTM had shown a larger or medium sized effects of change in awareness in seven out of eight domains.

A positive relationship between improvement in health literacy and improvement of glycosylated haemoglobin levels has been shown. However, there was no significant difference in glycaemic control in those who received the health education every 6 months and those who received it 12 months apart.

Conclusion

The findings of this study reveal the appropriateness of a one-to-one structured education program for type 2 diabetes patients. Further, it reveals that the translated version of the heiQTM questionnaire well adopted in assessing knowledge improvement among the Sri Lankan type 2 diabetes participants.