Empowerment levels of patients diagnosed with essential hypertension and TYPE 2 diabetes mellitus in Ankara University Faculty of Medicine, Family Medicine and endocrinology and metabolic diseases polyclinics

Aim: In this study, we aimed to determine the patient empowerment levels of patients diagnosed with essential hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus, which are common chronic diseases, and whether there is a difference between them. Materials and Methods: Our study is a cross-sectional study and consists of patients diagnosed with essential hypertension and/or type 2 diabetes mellitus, who applied to Ankara University Faculty of Medicine, Family Medicine and Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases outpatient clinics between 10.10.2022 and 15.12.2022, who met the inclusion criteria and agreed to participate in the study. The patients were asked to fill in a questionnaire consisting of two parts. First part; consists of a 11-question questionnaire containing personal and disease-related information. In this section, the patient; gender, age, education level, marital status, how many years of diagnosis, current treatments, whether there is a diet program and whether there is a history of emergency admission/inpatient treatment due to illness in the last year. In the second part, the 37-item patient empowerment scale, developed by Small in 2012 and validated and reliable in Turkish by Kaya and Işık in 2018, was used. Scale questions are scored between 1 and 5. As the score obtained from the scale increased towards 5, patient empowerment was evaluated as high, and as it decreased towards 1, patient empowerment was evaluated as low. It was examined whether there was a difference between the personal and disease-related information of the patients and their empowerment levels. Results: We included, total of 434 patients, 300 of whom applied to the Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases outpatient clinic and 134 patients who applied to the Family Medicine outpatient clinic, in our study. 63.4% (n=275) of the patients included in the study were female and 36.6% (n=159 ) were male. The mean age was 56.48±11.42 years, and the age of the patients ranged from 19 to 88 years. In our study; 126 patients were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, 161 patients with hypertension, and 147 patients with both diseases. When the scale scores of the patients were examined, it was seen that the highest average was identity and the lowest average was enabling others. The patient empowerment levels of patients with type 2 diabetes were found to be higher than the group with two diseases. When it was evaluated whether there was a relationship between the diagnosis time of the patients and the empowerment levels, it was seen that there was no significant difference in both disease groups. When the empowerment scores according to age were examined, it was seen that the patients in the 18-34 age group had higher levels of empowerment than the patients aged 65 and over. University graduate patients were found to have higher levels of patient empowerment compared to other groups. Conclusion: It was found that the empowerment levels of patients with type 2 diabetes were higher than the group with a combined diagnosis of type 2 diabetes and hypertension. It was observed that there was no significant difference between the empowerment levels of patients with type 2 diabetes and hypertension. Keywords: Patient empowerment, type 2 diabetes mellitus, essential hypertension