Apotekkunder med diabetes: Egenmåling av blodglukose og behov for farmasöytisk rådgivning
Sammanfattning
Background: Pharmacists communicate daily with diabetes patients. Guidelines recommend that patients have knowledge of their disease, treatments and therapy goals. The aim was to describe self-monitoring of blood glucose among pharmacy customers with diabetes and estimate their need for pharmaceutical counselling.
Material and methods: Pharmacy students interviewed pharmacy customers with diabetes and collected data on self-reported blood glucose, self-monitoring, HbA1c, medication and demographics. Participants were defined to benefit from pharmaceutical counselling if they fulfilled at least one of the following: HbA1c >12.0%, extreme blood glucose values, > 10 drugs (or unknown number), no use of measurement results, or unknown HbA1c.
Results: The study included 486 pharmacy customers with diabetes. Among those reporting an HbA1c-value, 45% had an HbA1c above the treatment goal, 34% did not know their HbA1c-value. Most performed self-monitoring (90%), 24% were self-taught and 6% reported no use of measurements. Some (19%) were occasionally unsure of measurement accuracy, but few controlled their glucometer, particularly in the type 2 diabetes group (73%). Thirty-five percent (55% including unknown HbA1c) would benefit from pharmaceutical counselling.
Conclusion: Diabetes patients think blood glucose measurements are important and feel relatively confident in their measurement practice, but a substantial proportion of patients would benefit from pharmaceutical counselling.