The Impact of Nutritional Education Program on Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices among Sample of Type 2 Diabetes Patients

Background: Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a chronic metabolic disorder, characterized by poor glycemic control. Nutritional education enhances knowledge, attitudes, and practices leading to better glycemic control. Objective: To find out the impact of nutritional education program on knowledge, attitudes and practices of participants regarding the glycemic control in type 2 diabetes mellitus. Methodology: A quasi-experimental study was conducted at Baghdad medical city on 45 patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus and recruited by non-probability convenience sampling method over three months duration. Patients were assessed for knowledge, attitudes and practices with structured questionnaire that was derived from previous literatures and validated by expert panel at baseline and after three months during which a five nutritional educational lectures were done. Fisher exact tests was used to analyze qualitative variables and paired T test was used to analyze quantitative variables and a P-value < 0.05 was considered as discrimination of significance. Results: After three months of nutritional education there were a significant increase in the mean of knowledge score from 18.25 to 21.63 (P<0.001), attitudes from 13.65 to 17.28 (P<0.001) and practices from 14.15 to 20.13 (P<0.001). Conclusion: Nutritional education program is effective to enhance the knowledge, attitudes and practices toward diabetes.