Abstract:
Background: The term diabetes mellitus describes a metabolic disorder of multiple etiologies
characterized by chronic hyperglycemia with disturbances of carbohydrate, fat and protein
metabolism resulting from defects in insulin secretion, insulin action, or both. Adherence is
defined as the extent to which a patient’s behavior coincides with the prescribed health care
regimen as agreed upon through a shared decision making process between the patient and the
health care provider. Achieving glucose control requires adherence to a variety of selfmanagement regimens, most notably to insulin injection for type I DM.
Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the level of adherence to insulin self
administration and associated factors among type I diabetic patient at JUSH, Jimma, Ethiopia.
Methods: Institutional based cross sectional quantitative study supplemented with a qualitative
method was employed on 263 sampled type I diabetes patients by simple random sampling from
February1 to April 30, 2013. Data was collected using structured and pre-tested questionnaire
by trained data collectors and was entered to Epidata version 3.1 and analyzed using SPSS
windows version 16.0.Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis were used in
analyzing the data and finally the result was presented in graphs and tables.
Results: According to this study 30.9% of the respondents were adhered and 69.1% were not
adhered to insulin self administration within the last three months. About 7.4%, 73.1% and
19.5% of the respondents have poor, fair and good knowledge about insulin and its
administration respectively. Most of the respondents 176(68.8%) mix insulin before injection by
shaking. More than sixty percent of the respondents possess favorable attitude towards the
insulin treatment. Logistic regressions showed that factors associated with adherence were,
marital status (p= 0.038), forgetfulness (p= 0.000), lack of transportation (p= 0.006) and being
busy (p= 0.002) but some socio demographic factors like religion and occupation were found to
be insignificant with adherence to insulin self administration.
Conclusion: Finding of this study indicated that majority of the respondents were not adhered to
insulin self administration (69.1%). Thus, it can provide alarming information for concerning
bodies to take action since DM is a major public problems.
