Abstract

Objective: To describe the reality of foot self-care knowledge among type 2 diabetic outpatients in Thai Binh General hospital in 2019 and to assess the changes in foot self-care knowledge of these patients after the health educational program. Method:The interventional study design with control group and before - after comparison were conducted from 03/2019 to 05/2019. 104 type 2 diabetic outpatients were allocated into two groups, 52 patients received the study’s educational program and 52 other patients received the common instruction as the control group. The same prepared questionnaire was used to assess for both groups and time series. Results:Before the intervention, no significant differerence was seen in the foot self-care knowledge between the research group and the control group with mean score of 16.25 ± 3.86 points and 16.50 ± 3.97 points, respectively (p>0,05). There was a significant improvement in the foot self-care knowledge of patients who received the study’s educational program immediately after the education (T2) with mean score of 23.15 ± 2.47 points and remained at 22.3 ± 2.22 points one month later (T3) in compared with 16.25 ± 3.86 points before the program (T1) (p<0,001). Meanwhile, the mean scores of knowledge within the patients of control group did not increase significantly from 16.50 ± 3.97 points at T1 to 16.60 ± 3.81 points at T2 then 18.21 ± 3,62 points at T3 (p>0,05). In the research group, the percentage of patients reached the good level of knowledge was 100% immediately after the educaional program and maintained at 90.4% after completing the education one month. But there was no considerable change in these percentages within the control group. Conclusion: The educational program applied in this study showed the significant improvement in the foot self-care of type 2 diabetic patients in comparison with common instruction and should be maintained.