The Causes of Non-Compliance to Treatment Among Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients

Abstract

Background: Generally, type 2 diabetes mellitus can end with many complications, which leads to severe unwanted health problems that can be prevented by strict adherence to the prescribed methods of management conducted by the physician. So, this study was designed to evaluate the range of the patient’s compliance to therapy (drug, diet, and exercise). Methods: An analytic cross-sectional study evaluated 380 convenient samples with type 2 diabetes visiting private internal medicine clinics in AL-Kut city and over 18 years. All patients were consented to participate and full a pre-tested questionnaire consisting of questions related to the causes of non-compliance to the management protocol. Results: The sample consisted of 209(55%) females, 91.8% were from urban regions, and 43.2% had a college degree or above educational level. There were 64.2% who was continuously measuring their glucose level, but only 39.2% visiting the doctors regularly. On the other hand, most patients (78.4%) declared that they complied with drug therapy. On the other hand, only 20.5% of patients always follow the doctor’s instructions regarding a healthy diet, while 9.7% mentioned compliance with regular exercise. The significant causes of non-compliance to the drug were costly drugs in (25.4%) and (19.8%) for the forgetting. There were 123(62.4%) who did not care about healthy food, and 119(42%) could not practice exercise because they could not do that. Conclusion: The higher rate of non-compliance for diet and exercise focuses on the need for an actual intervention to increase the awareness about the importance of these two management types.