Knowledge, attitude, and practice towards diabetes mellitus among outpatient diabetic elderly persons: a descriptive study

Objective To investigate the knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) towards diabetes mellitus (DM) among outpatient diabetic elderly persons attending tertiary healthcare facilities in Nigeria and also to verify the null hypotheses of no significant differences within demographic variables. Methods The study was based on descriptive research design and was carried out in 36 public tertiary healthcare facilities in Nigeria, from August to December 2019. Using the purposive sampling technique, a total of 360 diabetic elderly persons aged 60 years and above were studied. An adapted KAP questionnaire with 0.86 reliability indexes was used for data collection. Frequency, percentage, and chi square were used for data analysis. All analysis was completed using IBM SPSS version 22. Results There were 348 (97%) valid copies of the questionnaire used for analysis. The study revealed that the outpatient diabetic elderly persons had high knowledge 303 (87%), positive attitude 265 (76%), and good practice 286 (82%) towards DM. Statistically, there was a significant difference within variables of age (p value=0.001<0.05) and education level (p value=0.018<0.05) while none existed on the variable of gender (p value=0.071>0.05). Conclusion The participants had high KAP relating to DM. However, the finding of this study is not a complete reflection of the real situation regarding DM among elderly persons in Nigeria. There are overwhelming evidences of high prevalence of DM and thus the need for KAP sustainability and subsequent improvement in the healthcare sector to successfully combat the disease and proffer reliable ways of prevention among the population.

Automated summary

The study found that outpatient diabetic elderly persons in Nigeria have high knowledge (87%), positive attitude (76%), and good practice (82%) towards diabetes mellitus. Significant differences were found within age and education level variables, while no significant difference was found within the gender variable.