Knowledge, Attitude and Practice in Diabetic Patients About Diabetic Foot Disease

Abstract

Background: Diabetic foot disease (DFD) is a major challenge for the healthcare system, with enormous economic consequences for people living with diabetes, their families and society and it affects both quality of life and quality of care in the diabetic patients. This study was conducted to know about the knowledge, attitude and practices about diabetic foot disease in diabetic patients.
Methodology: The study of knowledge, attitude and practices about DFD was done at the different areas in Lahore and at Bhutta Clinical Lab, Multan. Duration of this study was about 6 months. Questionnaire was designed and filled. Sample size of this study was 380. Data was collected and analysed by using SPSS.
Results: In this study, 67.9% diabetic patients had poor knowledge, 30% had satisfactory knowledge whereas only 2.1% patients had good knowledge. Regarding attitude towards the DFD, 98.7% patients had good attitude, 1.3% patients had satisfactory attitude and poor attitude had not showed by any patient. In practices score, 47.4% were doing satisfactory practices, 42.9% patients were doing good practices and 9.7% patients were doing poor practices regarding DFD.
Conclusion: In this study, awareness of the diabetic foot disease in diabetic patients was poor that may cause increase in the frequency of the diabetic foot disease that may ultimately cause amputation of the lower limb and even cause death due to sepsis. But attitude towards the disease was good in majority of the diabetic patients and practices regarding disease were also satisfactory therefore by increasing the knowledge regarding disease and knowledge of the good practices, reduction of the severe cases of disease and prevention of the disease should be done.