Evaluation the impact of sms intervention on improvement of illness perception and treatment compliance in diabetic patients

Chronic diseases are an important public health concern that is increasing all over the world. The disease perception and therapeutic compliance of the individuals have an important place challenging with chronic diseases. The aim of this intervention study is to evaluate the impact of health communication techniques on improvement of illness perception, health behavior and treatment compliance in diabetic patients who referred to Afyon Kocatepe University Medical Faculty Ahmet Necdet Sezer Application and Research Hospital. Research participants were randomly assigned to three groups. These were control, suggestive, motivating and informative. Suggestive messages were sent as daily while motivating and informative messages were sent once a week in a year. The participants were interviewed with tailored questionnaire face to face at the beginning while via telephone at the end of the study. They also evaluated for Treatment Compliance Scale and Health Belief Model Scale. The metabolic measurements were obtained from Hospital Information System both the beginning and at the end of the study. In our study, there was a significant increase for health beliefs and treatment compliance in suggestive, motivating and informative groups after the intervention. However, there was no significant difference in control group. Also, HbA1c values of suggestive, motivating and informative groups decreased over time but not statistically significant. In our study, it was observed that SMS intervention in diabetic individuals affected individuals' health beliefs and treatment compliance. Especially in the motivating and informative groups, differences were found in all parameters of the Health Belief Model Scale. There was also an improvement for perceived health status in the informative group. It was observed that changes in treatment compliance and health beliefs were related both to the instructive content and content-free reminding effect of SMS. We think that during the planned interventions, the measurement of the individuals' health beliefs at certain intervals and the regulation of the interventions according to the changing health beliefs will contribute to the positive results.