Poster Session : PS 0154 ; Diabetes : Do Diabetic Patients Use Their Glucometers Effectively: Awareness of the Importance of Self-Monitoring in Diabetes = Poster Session : PS 0154 ; Diabetes : Do Diabetic Patients Use Their Glucometers Effectively: Awareness of the Importance of Self-Monitoring in Diabetes

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Background: Home glucose monitoring is vital for diabetic patients to maintain acceptable glucose levels. We aimed to demonstrate how effective home glucose monitoring was among diabetic patients who were followed in internal medicine outpatient clinics of our hospital. Methods: Randomly selected 89 diabetic patients who were admitted to internal medicine outpatient clinic in a week and who had glucometers were included in the study and a questionnaire was administered. The answers were categorized and the results were evaluated with SPSS. Results: The questions and the percentage of answers are shown in Table 1. Although diabetes duration of the patients was mostly more than 5 years, only half of them had a glucometer for that period. Most of the patients didn`t calibrate their devices. Most strikingly, only 25% of the patients in general were given a proper education for the usage of glucometers. 72% of patients who claimed to have been educated were mostly given instructions by a pharmacist that cannot be considered as education and only 35% of this group were educated by a diabetes nurse or a doctor. Only 40% of the patients monitored their glucose levels regularly, rest of the patients used their glucometers rarely or none. Conclusions: Home monitoring of glucose levels for diabetic patients would approve blood glucose levels by making necessary treatment adjustments available. Providing the optimal treatment would prevent/delay diabetes related complications, improve quality of life and contribute to decrease health costs. Thus; it`s necessary to educate and follow our diabetic patients better and assure that they use their glucometers more effectively and frequently. To include the patients to the treatment and to monitoring of diabetes seems to be the only way to achieve a better outcome of the disease.