Summary
Poor adherence to treatment creates an acute problem in achieving favorable outcomes in patients diagnosed with diabetes mellitus. According to Ellis et al. (2018), diabetes ranked second out of seventeen chronic diseases in terms of low adherence and hospitalizations due to non-compliance with the treatment regimen. A significant contribution to the issue stems from the poor medical team performance resulting from insufficient awareness of both patients and medical staff.
Project Purpose Statement
The purpose of this project lies in improving adherence to diabetes treatment in primary care settings via the use of the Medisafe mobile app. The intermediate goals of the project are educating patients on the consequences of low adherence to treatment and improving provider-patient communication.
Background and Significance
Patients diagnosed with diabetes mellitus are inclined not to comply with the therapeutic regimen and often refuse to undergo treatment. According to Siddiqui et al. (2019), deviation from the prescribed regimen might happen due to the lack of opportunities or resources to undergo treatment offered by the clinic. Therefore, the treatment policy of the medical team directly contributes to the issue of low adherence to medications. Healthcare professionals must take an active approach in order to increase patients’ awareness of the consequences of low adherence to treatment. In addition, communication between the patients and the healthcare provider must be improved in order to enhance control over adherence to the prescribed regimen.
The use of a mobile app such as Medisafe would serve as an innovative solution to the problem. Healthcare providers would become able to establish stable contact with the patients, thus increasing their treatment adherence levels. According to Rezaei et al. (2019), the issue of low adherence often stems from the medical team’s inability to assess the developments and exert sufficient pressure on the patient. The use of a mobile app for frequent and rapid communication in diabetes treatment is expected to mitigate the problem and increase adherence levels.
PICOT-Formatted Clinical Project Questions
The framework of the project can be structured in the PICOT-formatted questions as presented below:
- Population: patients of local primary healthcare organizations diagnosed with diabetes mellitus. The project population will be divided into control and intervention groups with an equal number of participants.
- Intervention: the patients from the intervention group will install the Medisafe app on their smartphones under the doctor’s guidance. They will be instructed on how to use Medisafe for setting reminders and communicating with the medical team. Additionally, the patients from the intervention group will receive a detailed explanation of the negative consequences of low adherence to diabetes treatment. The control group members will receive a standard treatment without using the Medisafe app.
- Comparison: After the project’s timeframe end, a treatment adherence percentage will be calculated for the control and intervention groups. In addition, adherence percentages will be calculated every week in order to obtain a dynamic picture of intervention effectiveness.
- Outcomes: the adherence to diabetes treatment levels among the intervention group is expected to be significantly higher than in the control group due to enhanced communication and control via the mobile app.
- Timeframe: the project will last 12 weeks in order to track the effectiveness of intervention in a relatively long period. Furthermore, the 12-week span would allow monitoring of the short-run changes in adherence to treatment.
References
Ellis, K., Mulnier, H., & Forbes, A. (2018). Perceptions of insulin use in type 2 diabetes in primary care: A thematic synthesis. BMC Family Practice, 19(1), 1-21. Web.
Rezaei, M., Valiee, S., Tahan, M., Ebtekar, F., & Gheshlagh, R. G. (2019). Barriers of medication adherence in patients with type-2 diabetes: A pilot qualitative study. Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy, 12, 589-599. Web.
Siddiqui, M. H., Khan, I. A., Moyeen, F., & Chaudhary, K. A. (2019). Identifying barriers to therapeutic adherence in type 2 diabetes: A complex and multidimensional clinical issue. Asploro Journal of Biomedical and Clinical Case Reports, 2019(1), 22. Web.