Abstract:
Chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus require daily self management and long term therapies. Regimen adherence poses a unique challenge for patients with chronic illnesses including diabetics resulting to repeated hospital admissions, amputations and even death. There is paucity of information on regimen adherence behaviour among diabetic patients attending diabetic clinic at University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH) Enugu. Thus the study was done to determine the prevalence and associated factors of non adherence among adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus in UNTH Enugu. A cross sectional study was done and a researcher- developed- questionnaire was used to collect data from October and December 2010. Majority, 63.5% of the respondents were females while 36.5% were males. Their mean age was 60.1 years and 88% were married. The prevalence of non adherence to medication was 24.5%, while 57.5% of the respondents did not have glucometer for self monitoring of blood glucose. Majority, (86.1%) of those on oral hypoglycaemic agent (OHA) could not monitor their blood glucose level at least twice weekly, 49.0% of the respondents missed hospital appointments and most of them, 63.5% were eating irregularly. Age (p 0.006, C I 0.025 – 0.544) and marital status (p 0.025, C I 1.250 – 25.792) were found to be associated with non adherence to medication. This showed that age and marital status militated against adherence to medication in the respondents. Cost of transportation (p 0.000, C I 0.069 –0.472) ,discouraging attitudes of health workers (p 0.003, C I 0.006 – 0.353) and late commencement of clinics (p 0.006, C I 0.007 – 0.448) were associated with non adherence to coming for checkups. Based on these findings, it was concluded that there was non adherence to various aspects of management regimen among the respondents. Recommendations included that healthcare providers (physicians, nurses, pharmacists ) should screen patients for non adherence when they report no improvement with their prescribed therapy. Also communication and patient- provider relationship should be improved and clinic activities commenced on time.
