Effectiveness of Educational Intervention on Quality of Life of Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Diabetes is a chronic metabolic disease with severe complications and high mortality rate. Living with a chronic illness can negatively affect an individual's perception of quality of life. The objective of the present study was to determine the effect of educational intervention on quality of life f patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

The present study was a quasi-experimental pretest posttest design with experimental group and control group. The study was conducted in the diabetic clinic of Govt. Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram. The participants of the study were selected consecutively. The sample consisted of 140 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus after 6 months of diagnosis and between the age group of 25–65 years, 70 in the experimental group and 70 in the control group. Socio demographic and clinical data were collected using an interview schedule. The health related quality of life was measured using Short form 36 Version 2 (SF 36 V2) quality of life survey. Educational intervention was given to the patients in the experimental group and patients in the control group received only the standard treatment. Data were collected at baseline, after 3 months and 6 months from both the groups. The data were analyzed using appropriate descriptive and inferential statistics.

The quality of life assessment revealed that there was an increase in all the individual domains and the overall quality of life scores of the patients in the experimental group when compared to the patients in the control group, which was statistically significant (p< 0.0001). Thus educational intervention was effective in improving the quality of life of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

As a chronic disease, diabetes affect the end organs and complications have tremendous impact on quality of life of the individual and they require long term care and management. Diabetes self-management education plays a significant role in the clinical management of diabetes. The study provides evidence that diabetes self-management education can effectively implemented in our settings and improve health indicators significantly.