Assessing efficacy of diabetes school using diabetes knowledge scale in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Background: Diabetes education, as an essential component of diabetes management, improves various aspects of diabetes mellitus including lowering Haemoglobin A1c. There is a number of surveys evaluating diabetes knowledge.Methods: The purpose of this study to measure diabetes knowledge of patients with diabetes mellitus after a structured group education programme named as diabetes school. This study is an observational study and the design is a cohort study. The study took place in 2017-2018. The duration of follow-up is 4 weeks. Fifty-four patients aged over 18 with a previous diagnosis of diabetes mellitus, who attended to the diabetes school education programme, were included to the study. Twenty-three patients participated in the true-false version of the revised Michigan diabetes knowledge questionnaire before and after the programme.Results: Twenty female and 3 male patients were aged 60.43±9.97 years. The scores improved significantly after the education programme (7.61±4.59 vs 12.39±3.35, p<0.0001). The number of patients correctly identifying more than half of the statements showed a steep increase after the programme (n=6, 26.0% vs n=17, 73.9%). Before education programme 13 had poor knowledge, 9 had moderate, and 1 had good knowledge. After completion 6 had poor knowledge, 11 had moderate, and 5 had good knowledge.Conclusions: Diabetes school is effective in improving diabetes knowledge in patients with diabetes mellitus. Revised Michigan Diabetes Knowledge Questionnaire can be used to evaluated diabetes knowledge. It may aid to detect the subgroup of patients who are lack knowledge of various aspects of diabetes mellitus.