Impact of a pharmaceutical care program and evaluation of the quality of life in type 2 diabetic patients at A nursing home setting

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of pharmaceutical care services provided by the pharmacist to patients with type 2 diabetes residing at a nursing home as well as to assess diabetes-related quality of life of the patients. The patients with type 2 diabetes residing at the who have been prescribed at least one antidiabetic drug one month prior to the commencement of the pharmaceutical care program were first informed about the study and those who agreed to participate in the study (n=39) were included. During this longitudinal study, patients' data was collected and a patient record was created at the first interview; also, quality of life of the patients was assessed at the first interview. Drug knowledge level and patients' adherence to therapy were assessed at the initial and at the final interview. During the 3-months pharmaceutical care period, the pharmacist provided the patients oral and written education every 15 days. Written education included provision of patient education brochures that were prepared specifically about the drugs each patient was taking for diabetes. The significance of the difference between the initial and the final measures of the continuous variables such as HbA1c, fasting blood glucose, systolic and diastolic blood pressure was tested by paired-samples T-test, while Chi-square test (McNemar) was used for the categorical variables. The pharmaceutical care program showed positive results such as a significant decrease in HBA1C levels (p <0.05), an increase in adherence scores (p <0.01) and an increase in medication knowledge scores (p <0.001); and diabetes-related quality of life was found to be correlated with the presence of social support, absence of severe hyperglycaemia or hypoglycaemia, absence of retinopathy, nephropathy and cardiovascular disease. Moreover, the age of patient's has been shown to associated with their quality of life. Keywords: type 2 diabetes; pharmacist; education; drug information; drug adherence; quality of life; pharmaceutical care