Analysis of Priorities of Patients Living with Diabetes

Abstract

<p> Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects more than 2 million Canadians. In order to reduce the risk of complications, people with diabetes must monitor their symptoms and actively manage diet, exercise, and medication. Patient priority is defined as the patient's implicit or explicit ordering of importance, ease and frequency of preventative or treatment activities for managing diabetes. In this study, we report on the findings of a questionnaire of diabetes patient priorities. The primary purpose of this study was to identify patient priorities and their relationships for managing diabetes from a patient's perspective. Multivariate analysis techniques were applied to find the patterns within the ratings of importance, ease and frequency for seventeen diabetes care activities. Multivariate analysis is used when more than one measurement is taken on a given experimental unit and all the measurements need to be considered together so that one can understand how they are related and what the essential structure is. In our study, the multivariate techniques used were MANCOVA, multivariate regression, and factor analysis. Due to the missing values, simple and multiple imputations were necessary. This study acts as a pilot study for a future, larger study about patient priorities.</p>