Abstract

Reviewing the Relation between Social Support and Blood Sugar Control in Elders with Diabetes Type 2

Since a major part of curing the elders' diabetes occurs at home, family and relatives play an important role in keeping these patients. This study aims to review the relation between social support and blood sugar control in the elders of Urmia. This research is a cross-sectional (descriptive-analytical) study, in which 200 elders, diagnosed with diabetes Type 2 from rural health centers have been selected in random with cluster sampling method. Social support has been used by means of Philips Social Support Questionnaire and to measure the blood sugar, glycosylated hemoglobin of diabetes patients has been employed. The data has been analyzed by means of descriptive statistics and independent T tests, Pearson and ANOVA correlation coefficient in SPSS 16. Results show that the score of social support of elders with diabetes is 15.40 ±6.94. Social support has a meaningful relation with variants of gender, age, education, marital status, diabetes disease, and economic status. Moreover, the results show there is a meaningful correlation between social support as well as its sub-domains and blood sugar control (p = 0.001, r = -0.45). Due to the influence of social support and its relevant factors on blood sugar control, it is recommended to take care of the elders with diabetes throughout the society more, based on the evidence from this study.

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