Adherence and satisfaction with oral hypoglycemic medications: a pilot study in Palestine

Objectives Diabetes mellitus is a chronic progressive disease characterized by numerous health complications. Medication adherence is an important determinant of therapeutic outcome. Few studies on medication adherence have been published from the Arab countries. Therefore, the objective of this pilot study was to assess hypoglycemic medication adherence and its association with treatment satisfaction. Setting Military Medical Services clinic in Nablus, Palestine. Methods This is a cross sectional descriptive study. A convenience sample of 131 diabetic patients was studied. The 8-item Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS-8) and Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire for Medication were used to assess adherence and treatment satisfaction, respectively. Statistical Package for Social Sciences was used for statistical analysis. Main outcome measure Level of adherence, treatment satisfaction and association between adherence and treatment satisfaction among diabetic patients. Results According to MMAS-8, 50 patients (38.5%) had a high adherence, 58 (44.6%) had a medium adherence and 22 (16.9%) had a low adherence rate. The mean scores of satisfaction domains were 71 ± 17.6 and 95 ± 16.4 for effectiveness (EFF) and side effects (SE), respectively. Adherence score was a positively and significantly correlated with EFF satisfaction domain (P < 0.01) and age (P = 0.01). Similar significant correlation was found between adherence level and duration of illness (P = 0.047). However, adherence was not significantly associated with gender (P = 0.2), number of hypoglycemic medications (P = 0.5) or SE satisfaction domain (P = 0.2). Discussion and conclusion The majority of diabetic patients in this pilot study were non-adherent. Improving patients’ treatment satisfaction will improve treatment adherence.