Abstract
BACKGROUND: Inadequate diabetes self-care knowledge leads to developing diabetic complications and death. Diabetic complications are directly related to the patient's level of diabetic self-care knowledge. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to assess diabetic self-care knowledge and its associated factors among adult diabetes mellitus patients on follow-up care at North Shewa Zone government hospitals, Oromia Region, Ethiopia, 2020. METHODS: An institution-based cross-sectional study was employed using a consecutive sampling technique from January 1 to February 30/2020 among 245 adult diabetes mellitus patients on follow-up care at North Shewa Zone government Hospitals, Oromia Region, Ethiopia. We used Epi data version 3.1 to enter the data and SPSS version 25 for analysis. Both bivariable and multivariable logistic regression was used to identify significant factors for knowledge of diabetic self-care. RESULTS: In this study, from a total of 245 diabetic patients, 230 participated giving a response rate of 93.87%. More than half of the study respondents, 156 (67.8%), had good diabetes self-care knowledge and variables such as being employed (AOR; 0.146, 95%; CI 0.18-0.94), having information on diabetic self-care (AOR; 3.003, 95% CI 1.24-5.3) and urban residency (AOR; 0.27, 955 CI 0.099-0.532) were found to be independent factors affecting diabetic self-care knowledge. CONCLUSION: The magnitude of diabetes self-care knowledge was not adequate and some critical knowledge gaps were also identified in specific areas which reflect that there is a need to improve diabetic self-care knowledge among patients by implementing adequately and continuous diabetic self-care education programs.