Abstract

The purpose of the study was to assess and report Medication Adherence in selected Type II Diabetes Mellitus patients by using Morisky’s Adherence Predictor Scale (4-item) questionnaire, to develop data collection form and informed consent form, and to identify factors linked to poor adherence in selected patients of Davangere, Karnataka. A prospective observational questionnaire based study was conducted for a period of 6 months by using Morisky’s Adherence Predictor Scale (4-Item) Questionnaire. Among 151 cases, which were collected 70 were males and 81 were females. The adherence levels were 64.90% (high adherence), 29.80% (medium adherence) and 5.29% (poor adherence). The correlation between the patient’s socio demographic details and adherence rate indicated that higher adherence was among middle age group (69.83%) and those with primary education (96.30%). The most common reasons for non adherence was when the patient felt better (75.47%), cost of medications being expensive (92.45%) and high quantity of medications i.e. too much medications (66.04%). It is concluded that the participants in the area of study were highly adherent to their anti-diabetic medications. Various factors of medication non-adherence were identified and evaluated. Therefore, we recommend interventions that will still address these factors of non-adherence in order to improve adherence the more. Some of such interventions include the physicians and pharmacists improving on the areas of patient education and medication counselling, communication between them and patients, encouraging patients to monitor their blood glucose level regularly, simplifying drug regimen with decreasing the number of drug taken, medication selection bearing in mind cost and intolerable side effects of the medications.