Effect of Diabetes Education on Complications and Diabetic Control Amongst Adult Patients with Diabetes in Madinah, Saudi Arabia

Background: Diabetes is a chronic condition that may become dangerous if there is insufficient insulin to help the body function properly. The proper care for diabetes depends on how well patients observe guidelines and prescriptions; consequently, patient education is critical. Poor learning may cause bad treatment and complications or other problems related to the disease.

Objectives: This study aims to evaluate patients' knowledge of diabetes, assigning a knowledge (K) score out of 100, and investigate the possible impact of educating patients, through general means or via healthcare professionals, on patient knowledge of diabetes control demonstrated in the absence/presence of diabetic complications.

Methods: This multi-center interview-based cross-sectional study used a questionnaire in Madinah, Saudi Arabia. This study was conducted on adults with diabetes who were aged 15-80. We used the Michigan Diabetic Knowledge Test (MDKT) to assess the knowledge of patients with diabetes.

Results: This study included 364 participants. The gender distribution was 48.33% male and 51.67% female. Most of them had type 2 diabetes (T2DM) without insulin (48.63%), followed by those with T2DM on insulin (36.26%), and patients with type 1 diabetes (T1DM) (15.11%). Patients with T2DM had significantly higher K scores than patients with type 1. Additionally, T2DM non-insulin patients' k-scores significantly exceeded those with T1DM. General and healthcare education both helped increase patients' K-scores. Mostly, patients with diabetes without any complications had significantly higher knowledge compared to those having them. Lastly, regardless of whether the education was delivered by general or professional means, the effect on glycated hemoglobin (HbA1C) levels was not significant.

Conclusions: Our study revealed that patients with T2DM exhibited higher knowledge than patients with T1DM. Furthermore, receiving education, whether by a healthcare professional or by general means, improved the knowledge levels of patients with T2DM but not patients with T1DM. Regarding diabetes complications, it was found that those with a higher level of knowledge had fewer complications. However, no evidence receiving education influenced the levels of HbA1C, neither in patients with T1DM nor T2DM.