Quality Of Life And Health Literacy Among Patients Living With Diabetes Mellitus In Penang State Hospital, Malaysia

Abstract

Introduction:   Diabetes mellitus is a major non-communicable disease (NCD) which affects approximately 10.5% of adults worldwide.

Methods:   This study is a cross-sectional study conducted in the Hospital Pulau Pinang. A total of 129 participants have been sampled, where the sampling method has been simple random sampling, with 122 minimum samples. Results:   The mean overall QOL scores is 60.85, with SD 18.180. The overall mean health literacy score is 73.76 (SD12.636) which is reported as sufficient health literacy among the respondents. Through multiple linear regression, QOL between patient’s age 18-40 years old and age 61-80 are significantly different. Mean QOL among patients with primary education and secondary education are significantly different from each other. Finally, patient’s QOL for excellent health literacy are significantly different from QOL for patients with problematic health literacy. Discussion: The limited health literacy or inadequate health literacy among participants in this study is 4.7%, which showed a higher rate of health literacy among Malaysians in this study. Health literacy is shown to significantly affect diabetic patients’ QOL.

Conclusion:  QOL is one of the many outcomes of treatment of diseases and therefore is important as a measure of outcome of treament.