Background: The International Diabetes Attitudes, Wishes, and Needs (DAWN) programmes have shown the existence of a critical gap in self management support and access to the support system. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the diabetes mellitus (DM) self management programme, with partnership between general practice and social work, on clinical outcomes, patient self efficacy and lifestyle behaviours.
Methods: In this is single blind randomised controlled trial, subjects were recruited from patients attending general outpatient clinics in the Hospital Authority New Territory East Cluster of Hong Kong. 157 subjects meeting the inclusion criteria completed the study and were randomly assigned to the experimental or control group. The experimental group underwent the six sessions of weekly DM self management course with emphasis on self efficacy and participatory approach. The outcome measurements included HbA1c concentration, DM self efficacy scale, dietary behaviours, body mass index (BMI), and waist: hip ratio.
Results: Baseline assessment observed no significant differences between experimental and control groups for the variables related to outcomes. For the experimental group, the proportion of subjects with normal HbA1c increased from 4.5% (3/66) at baseline to 28.6% (19/66) at week 28 (p<0.001), but there was insignificant improvement in the control group (3.9% to 11.8%, p=0.13). Repeated measure of analysis of variance showed pronounced improvement in DM self efficacy scale and BMI among the experimental group with significant interaction. Dietary behaviours also improved significantly in the experimental group.
Conclusion: The DM care model with partnership between general practice and social work demonstrated better diabetic control with improvement of self efficacy and minimisation of risk behaviours.
Trial registration: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN78882965.