Knowledge and Practices of foot care in Type Diabetic Patients Visiting OPD of a tertiary care hospital

Aim: To assess the knowledge and practices of foot care in terms of frequency of good, averageorpoorintype2 Diabetic patients. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Place and duration: Diabetic clinic, Jinnah Hospital Lahore. Six months, i.e. July2016 to January2017. Methodology: Diabetic patients were interviewed using a structured questionnaire comprising of 7and 18 questions in knowledge and practices section respectively. The data were analyzed using SPSS version 20. A total of 220 patients with mean age of 52.9 +/- 12.5years were included. Results: The mean knowledge score was 3.9 +/- 2.9 with 31.82% having good, 40% satisfactory & 28.18% having poor knowledge about diabetic foot care. In practices section, mean practices score was 10.50 +/- 4.5 with 16.82% good, 59.09% average, and 24.09% poor practices towards diabetic footcare. Conclusion: We concluded that Poor education, low socioeconomic status and short history of diabetes were significantly associated with lower knowledge and practice scores in this study. Programs to increase patient's awareness about foot-care in diabetes should be employed.