Treatment Compliance in Diabetics: Physician-Patient Relationship

Abstract

Diabetes is a chronic disease and non-compliance attitude of patients poses a great challenge to the success of therapy. Multiple factors influence compliance among diabetics and other chronic diseases and non-compliance results in avoidable consequences and complications. In order to determine the magnitudeand factors of non-compliance to physicians’ advice in diabetics attending outpatients, a cross-sectional analytical study was conducted in outpatient diabetic clinics of Shaikh Zayed and Services Hospitals in Lahore. Results presented in this study are based on 177 patients investigated for 3 months (April 2014-June2014). Subjects were conveniently enrolled after taking written informed consent using a self-constructed and structured questionnaire. Out of 177 participants, 55.36% were females and 51.41% participants were in the range of 52-75 years of age. Among 79 males, majority (45.6%) were employees, whereas 91.8% werehousewives among females’ participants,. Out of 177 diabetic patients, 42 patients (23.7%) were non-compliant and 135 patients (62.5%) were found to be compliant. The normal glucose level was observed in 120/177 (67.8%) of participants. Interestingly, 97.2% subjects revealed agood attitude as the main trait of apractitioner whereas 2.8% claimed good practice and competency. Conversely, 94.4% blamed bad attitude as a trait of bad doctor whereas 4.6% reported that the bad practice and incompetency is responsible for the negative trait. Taken together, compliance to physician’s advice is better among diabetics attending tertiarycare hospitals in current study. The study encourages our health care system to provide more awareness and obtain a deeper understanding of factors causing non-compliance. A positive relationship between patient and practitioners would positively impact on the clinical outcome of the ailments and their therapies.