Self-Care practices in diabetes: A community-based cross-sectional study in Vikarabad, Telangana

Background: Self-care practices in diabetes are deemed as one of the mainstays of management, but often poorly practiced by people with diabetes. Aim: The study describes self-care practices among adult diabetics registered with a primary health-care setup. Methods: This was a community-based cross-sectional study based out of the Ramaiahguda primary health center in Vikarabad town of Telangana. Informed consent was taken from all participants before the commencement of the study. All eligible candidates were approached for the study. The seven domains of the “American Association of Diabetes Educators measures of outcome” were taken as the base for assessment of self-care practices among the participants. Results: The mean (standard deviation [SD]) age of the 155 study participants was 50.8 years (SD 12.4 years). Among the various components of self-care, drug adherence, glucose monitoring, and diet modifications were regular as per the advice. Comparatively, healthy coping, risk reduction, and problem solving are the areas where the participants had a major scope to improve. The median self-care score of the participants was 15.25 (interquartile range 14.5–16.25) ranging from 0.25 to 18.0. 86 (55.5%) participants had good self-care scores, and 69 (44.5%) participants had moderate self-care scores. Conclusions: The observations from our study point toward a lack of understanding and in-depth evaluation of the effectiveness of diabetic self-care practices, which may in turn be one of the factors affecting compliance to such practices among the diseased population.