Measurement of Medication Adherence Behavior in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients Using Probabilistic Medication Adherence Scale (ProMAS)

Abstract

Diabetes is a chronic metabolic disease characterized by an increase in blood glucose levels. Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease that requires long-term treatment, which affects medication adherence. Adherence measurement can be done using a questionnaire approach, such as the Probabilistic Medication Adherence Scale (ProMAS) questionnaire. This study aims to determine the relationship between demographic factors and medication adherence scores in patients with diabetes mellitus. The research uses a quantitative research approach with a cross-sectional design. Convenience sampling method was used to select 112 respondents between January-April 2023 at various primary healthcare facilities in the Special Region of Yogyakarta. The ProMAS scoring results showed that 42.9% of respondents had moderate-to-high adherence levels and 41.1% had high adherence levels. It can be said that patients with diabetes mellitus in Yogyakarta are adherent in using medication. The most frequent non-adherent behavior was found in 4 questions: respondents forgot to take or inject medication (61.61%); respondents took or injected medication (one of them) slower than usual schedule (55.36%); respondents did not always take or inject medication at exactly the same time every day (62.5%); and respondents forgot to take or inject medication at least once in the past month (58.04%). Based on the Shapiro-Wilk normality test, a p-value of <0.001 was obtained, indicating that the data was not normally distributed. Statistical analysis showed no significant relationship between age (p=0.059) and adherence level. For the variables of total adherence score with total number of medications (p=0.472) and frequency of medication (p=0.485), the results showed no significant relationship between these variables. The relationship between total adherence score and gender (p=0.422); payment method (p=0.937); need for assistance (p=0.597); type of medication (p=0.467); highest education level (p=0.251); and employment status (p=0.521) showed no significant relationship between these variables. This indicates that diabetes mellitus patients with low or high adherence levels are not affected by the above factors.