Diabetes self-management and self-care of adolescents with diabetes mellitus in Bangladesh: a mixed-method study / Jafrin Jahan Eva

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a major healthcare burden worldwide with 639 million people are estimated to be diagnosed in next two decades. Bangladesh, is likely to emerge as the 8th highest ranking country in terms of the number of people diagnosed with DM by 2045. Low self-efficacy and self-care behaviour among the adolescents could have been the underlying cause for poor glycaemic control. Hence, the main objectives of this thesis were to evaluate the self-care practices and diabetes management self-efficacy levels and to explore the facilitators of and barriers to self-care practices and self-management among adolescents with DM in Bangladesh. A cross-sectional study was first conducted among 240 adolescents with diabetes at two tertiary hospitals in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Informed consent was obtained from prior to the administration of both pre-validated survey tools [i.e. Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities Measure (SDSCA) and Diabetes Management Self-efficacy Scale (DMSES)], demographic and clinical characteristics were collected. The majority of were female (59.6%) and diagnosed with TIDM (84.2%), with an average age of 15.1=1=2.2 years old. Both SDSCA and DMSES subscale domain scores were not significantly different between those adolescents with TIDM and T2DM (p> 0.05). 'Medication taking' was the highest mean subscale score for both SDSCA and DMSES. The lowest subscale score of SDSCA and DMSES was for 'specific diet' and 'blood glucose monitoring', respectively.