Assessment of Adherence to Insulin Self-Administration and Associated Factors Among Type I Diabetic Patients at Jimma University Specialized Hospital, Ethiopia

Background: Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder characterized by chronic hyperglycemia with disturbances of metabolism of food resulting from defects in insulin secretion, insulin action, or both. Adherence is defined as the extent to which a patient’s behaviour coincides with the prescribed health care regimen. Achieving glucose control requires adherence to a variety of self-management regimens, most notably to insulin injection for type I diabetes. 

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the level of adherence to insulin self-administration and associated factors among type I diabetic patient at Jimma University specialized hospital, Ethiopia. 

Methods: Institutional based quantitative cross-sectional study method was employed on 263 sampled type I diabetes patients by simple random sampling from February 1 to April 30, 2013. Data was collected using structured and pre-tested questionnaire by trained data collectors and was entered to Epidata version 3.1 and analysed using SPSS Windows version 16.0. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis was used in analysing the data and finally, the result was presented in graphs and tables. 

Results: According to this study 30.9% of the respondents were adhered and 69.1% were notadhered to insulin self-administration within the last three months. About 7.4%, 73.1% and19.5% of the respondents have poor, fair and good knowledge respectively. Most of the respondents 176(68.8%) mix insulin before injection by shaking. Logistic regressions showed that factors associated with adherence were, marital status (p= 0.038), forgetfulness (p= 0.000), lack of transportation (p= 0.006) and being busy (p= 0.002) but some socio-demographic factors like religion and occupation were found to be insignificant.

Conclusion: Finding of this study indicated that majority of the respondents did not adhere to insulin self-administration (69.1%). Thus, it can provide alarming information for concerning bodies to take action since diabetes is a major public problem.