Diabetes has been labelled as one of the largest crises in the twenty-first century. Saudi Arabia is one of the top 10 countries for prevalence of diabetes and one in five people has the condition. Medication adherence assessment is vital to help clinicians reach therapy outcomes and identify gaps in patient management. The aim of this PhD was to explore oral hypoglycaemic medication (OHM) adherence in patients with Type 2 diabetes patients in Saudi Arabia and to identify factors associated with OHM adherence. The aim was addressed by: 1) Conducting a systematic review to identify which tools could be used to measure adherence to OHM as well as to quantify adherence levels across different countries; 2) Undertaking a cross-sectional study to quantify the prevalence of adherence to OHM in a group of patients in Saudi Arabia using a validated measure of adherence. An interview study on a subset of these patients then explored in detail Type 2 diabetic patients' beliefs and attitudes towards their OHM regimen, including factors which helped or hindered their medication taking behaviour. The systematic review included 37 studies. It showed that the level of OHM adherence varied widely across all measures: 36% to 95% when dispensing records were used, 37% to 98% with self-report, and 17% to 97% with pill counts. The term 'adherence' was most commonly used. There was no identified studies assessing OHM adherence in Saudi Arabia. The cross-sectional study showed that the level of OHM adherence was 40%, Lower adherence was associated with patients of younger age (OR, 1.084; 95% CI, 1.056-1.112), individual taking a higher number of non-OHM (OR, 0.848; 95% CI, 0.728-0.986) and having a higher HbA1c level (OR, 0.808; 95% CI, 0.691-0.943). The interview study identified several factors affecting OHM adherence using a validated theoretical framework. Facilitators of OHM adherence were OHM scheduling, knowledge about OHM, knowledge on other relevant behaviours such as diet and physical activity, knowing how to take OHM appropriately and how to manage hypoglycaemia. In addition, OHM adherence was facilitated by beliefs of preventing diabetic complications, avoiding insulin injections, achieving an improved quality of life, accepting diabetes, being optimistic about the future, and having high self-confidence. Conversely, barriers to OHM adherence were forgetfulness, cognitive overload, lack of knowledge of sexual health implications of OHM, and knowledge of OHM side effects or drug-drug interactions. Furthermore, side effects of OHM such as weight gain or hypoglycaemia, knowing how to measure blood sugar, feeling no symptoms, and having many medications to take were additional barriers to OHM adherence. The MASA study also showed that there are several social- and physical-related factors affecting OHM adherence such as the patient-physician relationship and perceived family support. The work in this PhD suggests that targeting suboptimal OHM adherence behaviour needs to be done in a comprehensive manner. The key benefit is to provide future researchers with a comprehensive range of factors that can be targeted when defining targets for an intervention(s). Further systematic intervention development and testing is required to choose and prioritise the most promising interventions to improve OHM adherence.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:698876 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Aloudah, Nouf Mohammad |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=231048 |
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