Predictors of self-monitoring of blood glucose among noninsulin-treated patients with type 2 diabetes in a primary care setting in Hong Kong: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

Objectives: The current study aimed to examine the relationship between patient characteristics (internal psychological, external psychological, internal physical, external physical, and educational) and self-monitoring of blood glucose among noninsulin-treated patients with type 2 diabetes in a local primary care setting. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study, in which data were collected by a structured questionnaire. Correlational and multivariate multiple regression analyses were performed. Three hundred seventy-four noninsulin-treated patients with type 2 diabetes were eligible and completed the questionnaire in August 2019. The response rate was 93.5%. The respondents’ self-reported self-monitoring of blood glucose adherence was the main outcome measure. Results: In predicting self-monitoring of blood glucose adherence, the current regression model accounted for 12.3% of the variance (Adjusted R2 = 0.123, p < 0.05), with internal psychological factors and educational factors being significant. External psychological factors, external physical factors, and internal physical factors were found to be statistically nonsignificant. Conclusion: The findings highlighted the facilitating role of internal psychological factors and educational factors in SMBG adherence in noninsulin-treated type 2 diabetic patients. Among these factors, the education aspect was relatively strongly associated with increased SMBG adherence. With adequate patient education on diabetes and SMBG, the increased literacy would possibly strengthen patients’ internal psychological factors and motivate them to uptake SMBG practice. Implications from the current findings suggested that further research on different SMBG parameters is warranted to fill the knowledge gap in structuring an individualized and targeted SMBG protocol for better diabetic care.

Effect of Sociodemographic Factors on Self-Monitoring of Blood Glucose Behavior of People with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

“…T2DM patients with a life partner show better SMBG behavior than T2DM patients who do not have a life partner (Bonger et al, 2018;Mogre et al, 2017). A previous study shows that socioeconomic level determines SMBG behavior; higher education levels that show high socioeconomic status influence SMBG behavior (Bonger et al, 2018;Iwuala et al, 2015;Lv et al, 2021;Mak & Lau, 2021). Likewise, high-income levels indicate better SMBG behavior (Levine et al, 2009;Wang et al, 2019).…”

“…Other factors, such as psychosocial factors, can also affect the behavior of people with T2DM, including hypoglycemic experiences, family motivation, and desire to see the effects of dietary changes. In addition, the desire to please doctors when approaching the appointment date is a factor that affects their adherence to SMBG (Mak & Lau, 2021).…”

“…Based on the results of the literature review, it was found that several sociodemographic factors could influence SMBG behavior. These factors include age (Bonger et al, 2018), gender (Mogre et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2019), marital status (Bonger et al, 2018;Mogre et al, 2017), and education level (Bonger et al, 2018;Iwuala et al, 2015;Mak & Lau, 2021), income level (Levine et al, 2009;Wang et al, 2019), ethnicity (Assari et al, 2017;Levine et al, 2009;Peyrot et al, 2018) and family types (Levine et al, 2009;Mak & Lau, 2021). The results of several previous studies showed inconsistent results.…”

U-shaped association between online information exchange and app usage frequency: a large-scale survey of China ‘s online young and middle-aged people with pre diabetes and diabetes

“…We were surprised to find that SMBG, as well as having a test for glycated hemoglobin, was also positively correlated with app usage frequency. Previous research has shown that patients who are successful at sticking to SMBG have higher levels of health-related knowledge, self-efficacy, and education (46), while all these factors work in favor of encouraging self-management of blood glucose (47,48).…”