Attitude of health care professionals about the diabetes from India

Abstract

Abstract Background: Health care workers should have adequate knowledge and the correct attitude to deal with the diabetes. We conducted this study among nursing and medical students to assess their attitude regarding diabetes. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on medical (Group 1, N = 50) and nursing (Group 2, N = 50) students. Data was collected using the Diabetes Attitude Scale questionnaire developed by the University of Michigan Diabetes Research and Training Centre. The scores identify the attitude regarding five key areas of diabetes, namely need for special training, seriousness of diabetes, value of tight control, psychosocial impact and patient autonomy. The data were analyzed with appropriate statistical tests using GraphPad Prism Software, version 6 (GraphPad Software, San Deigo, CA, USA). Results: The study participants consist of 100 students of which 27 were male and 73 were female with a mean age of 22.9 ± 3.3 year. The scores in any subscale did not differ between the medical and nursing students. The correlation analyzes revealed that seriousness of diabetes is increasing linearly with age (P = 0.0325) and all the five key areas of diabetes showed a significant correlation with the increasing duration of residency (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Increasing age and more exposure to formal education are the major determinants of an individual′s attitude toward diabetes. Our study attempts to highlights the need of education for all health care workers involved in the management of diabetes.