Determination of attitude and knowledge of type 2 diabetic patients towards insulin therapy in Northern Cyprus.

Objective: To determine the attitude and knowledge of type-2 diabetics related to insulin therapy.
Methods: The descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted from January to March 2014 at the Dr. Burhan Nalbantoglu Public Hospital, Nicosia in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and comprised patients with type-2 diabetes. The Likert scale was used to score participants' response to questions using the following scoring system: 0 (disagree), 1 (neutral) and 2 (agree). The minimum scoring value for all the questions combined was 0 whereas the maximum scoring value was 50. Patients' attitudes were classified as either high, medium or low based on scores between 0-16, 17-33 and 34-50, respectively. SPSS 16 was used for data analysis.
Results: Of the 271 participants, 165(60.9%) were female and 106(39.1%) male. The overall mean age was 60.3±32.4 years. Moreover, 136(50.3%) participants had a medium attitude and knowledge score towards insulin therapy. men scored significantly better than females (p<0.05). Only 25(9.2%) participants had a high score towards insulin therapy.
Conclusions: The participants were found to have an inadequate attitude and knowledge response to insulin therapy.