Quality of Life and Self-care Activities Among Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients on Insulin

Abstract

Context: Self-care activities play a crucial role in the management of diabetes. It can also improve quality of life in patients. Aims: The present study was carried out to understand the QoL and self-care activities among T2DM patients on insulin and find out the association between quality of life and self-care activities. Settings and Design: This study was conducted on 105 subjects (55 females and 45 males) between the ages of 40 and 60 years with more than 1 year of T2DM attending OPD in the endocrinology department of private hospitals in North-east and East Delhi. Materials and Methods: A general questionnaire along with validated self-care (SDSCA) and quality of life (QOLID) questionnaires were used to collect data. Statistical Analysis: Data analysis was done using SPSS version 21.0. For the categorical variable, frequencies and percentages were calculated and for the continuous variables mean and standard deviations were calculated. Results: Mean age of subjects being 51.3 ± 6.2 years and 55% of them were females. It was observed that diet (P = 0.016), exercise (P = 0.001), blood sugar testing (P = 0.017), and foot care (P = 0.018) were strong predictors of self-care that were affecting the QoL. Mean scores of various domains between males and females revealed better QoL in males than females in domains of physical health (3.65 ± 0.94), physical endurance (4.11 ± 0.67), general health (3.19 ± 0.71), treatment satisfaction (3.55 ± 0.44), and overall QoL (3.50 ± 0.39). Conclusions: The present study showed that self-care activities and QoL among T2DM patients were poor. Results showed that improving nutritional status of patients can be effective on their QoL improvement.