PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Safford, Monika M.
AU  - Russell, Louise
AU  - Suh, Dong-Churl
AU  - Roman, Sheila
AU  - Pogach, Leonard
TI  - How Much Time Do Patients with Diabetes Spend on Self-Care?
AID  - 10.3122/jabfm.18.4.262
DP  - 2005 Jul 01
TA  - The Journal of the American Board of Family Practice
PG  - 262--270
VI  - 18
IP  - 4
4099  - http://www.jabfm.org/content/18/4/262.short
4100  - http://www.jabfm.org/content/18/4/262.full
SO  - J Am Board Fam Med2005 Jul 01; 18
AB  - Introduction: Little is reported about how much time patients spend on self-management, a cornerstone of diabetes care.Methods: We studied a cross-section of 1482 diabetic patients enrolled in 3 northeastern United States managed care plans. Patients were surveyed about how much time they spent on foot care, exercise, and food shopping/preparation (7/00 to 9/01). Logistic regressions modeled which types of patients were likely to spend time, and linear regressions modeled characteristics associated with spending more/less time.Results: Patients (57.9% ≥55 years; 51.6% women; 36.2% African American; 31.1% on insulin) spent 58 (mean) minutes/day on self-care (interquartile range 19, 84). Many patients skipped individual self-care elements: 37.9% reported no foot care, 37.7% no exercise, and 54.4% no time on food shopping/preparation. One fourth of patients with severe foot neuropathy symptoms spent no time on foot care. Never self-testers were less likely than others to engage in foot care (odds ratio (OR) 0.4 (95% CI 0.3, 0.6), exercise (OR 0.4 (95% CI 0.3, 0.6)), and food shopping/preparation (OR 0.7 (95% CI 0.5, 1.0)), and were likely to spend 30 minutes less total self-care time than frequent self-testers (P <.01).Discussion: Most people spent considerable time engaged in self-care, but many skipped individual tasks, offering clinicians opportunities for collaborative decision making.