Publication:

Knowledge and attitude of patients with diabetes in government hospitals in the Upper West Region of Ghana

Background Diabetes mellitus is a chronic progressive metabolic disorder characterized by hyperglycaemia mainly due to absolute or relative deficiency of insulin hormone. This study assessed the knowledge and attitude of clients with diabetes and its relationship with self-management practices in Government hospitals in the Upper West Region of Ghana.

Methods The research was a cross-sectional survey and adopted stratified sampling technique to select 201 respondents. Questionnaires were used for data collection with a reliability coefficient of 0.8. The data was analyzed using the SPSS version 21.

Results Knowledge on diabetes was high with the overall mean percentage of 72.8%. Diabetes patients had positive attitude with mean percentage of 84.4%. There was also significant relationship between knowledge of diabetes and self-management practices (p=0.0001) as well as attitude of diabetes patients and self-management practices (p=0.001).

Conclusions Diabetes patients in the Upper West Region have in-depth knowledge on the disease condition, self-management practices and positive attitude. These sign of awareness of the disease will very much assist in making the control of the condition easier in the area.