Vol. 9, Issue 9 (2020)

Author(s):
Dr. G Padmini Devi

Abstract:
Diabetes is a lifestyle disorder that needs a combination of medication, diet and exercise for effective glycemic control and to minimize the long term complications associated with the disease. This can be possible through education, which provides the opportunity to develop necessary skills to be self –reliant. Education through digital media would be effective due to its fast reach to all kinds of patients. With this, intention the present paper aimed to assess the impact of digital media on the self care skills of the diabetic patients. Two hundred respondents suffering from type2 diabetes from Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh were selected based on a simple random sampling method. A total of 90 text and 30 voice messages and 8 animated modules were disseminated for two months as a part of digital media education and assessed the post intervention changes in the self care skills of the respondents with a time gap of two months. The major findings of the study revealed that there was a significant improvement among the overall skills of the respondents in all the three areas of information. The improvement in clinical skills was found to be higher with a percent increase of 22.91% compared to the nutrition and management skills (19.08%, 9.85%) respectively. Thus, delivery of SMS mobile- based interventions and animation modules has bridged an effective communication channel to endeavor behavioral change, enhance disease specific self care skills and subsequently improve health outcomes.