Abstract
India is the diabetes capital of the world. Diabetes is growing alarmingly in India, home to more than 65.1 million people with the disease, compared to 50.8 million in 2010. Adherence to medication is a crucial part of patient care and indispensable for reaching clinical goals. The WHO, in its 2003 report on medication adherence, states that “increasing the effectiveness of adherence interventions may have a far greater impact on the health of the population than any improvement in specific medical treatment”. The main aim of the present study was to evaluate medication adherence of patients suffering from type 2 diabetes mellitus and counsel them towards improving of quality of life. This was a prospective observational study, conducted over 6 month’s period from December 2015 to June 2016, in a tertiary care hospital. A total 300 patients were studies for the evaluation of their medication adherence and were counselled accordingly. Morisky’s 8 item medication adherence scale was used to measure the adherence of the subjects. After counselling them KAP questionnaire was used to assess the outcome of the counselling. We found that patient counselling played an important role in the patient’s adherence towards medication which resulted in better therapeutic outcome which was noticed from their laboratory parameters. Thus, patient counselling plays a major role in medication adherence and therefore in improvement of quality of life.
