Awareness of self-monitoring of blood glucose and the challenges of diabetes management among elderly patients with diabetes

This study was proposed to explore the extent of awareness of self­ monitoring of blood glucose and to understand the challenges faced by elderly with diabetes in their day to day diabetes management. Elderly are prone to diabetes and they are also having other diseases and complications. This study will explore deeper the challenges that the elderly faced to find solutions and improve self-monitoring among them. It was a qualitative study with semi structured interviews. Interviews involved elderly people with diabetes. Most of them are from Bandar Puncak Alam, Selangor. 7 interviews were conducted face to face and 5 interviews were conducted via online social media. Snowball and convenience sampling method were used to recruit the respondents. All face to face interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim while the conversation through social media was saved. Data was then subjected to framework analysis. 12 respondents were interviewed. Their ages ranged from 4 7 to 73 years old. 11 Malays and 1 Chinese had been interviewed. From 12 respondents, 3 of them did not have the glucometer for their regular blood glucose checking. Out of 12 that had the glucometer, they also did not perform regular checking as they said the glucometer strips were expensive and they cannot afford the regular checking. The challenges they faced can be divided into attitude aspects and external factors. Attitude aspects include their preference for traditional remedies, complications they lived, worried about the side effects of medicines, "I am still okay" syndrome as they were in denial state about their diagnosis and also they were trying not to be dependent on medicines to control their disease progression. External aspects include financial problems, friends' influences, high pill burden and also food as their biggest enemy. The extent of self-monitoring among elderly patients with diabetes varies from patient to patient due to multiple factors. The challenges faced by the elderly in their day to day managements are huge as most of them had to deal with food cravings, fear and burden of multiple medications, comorbidities and complications.