Iran Diabetes Research Roadmap (IDRR) Study; Patient Education in Diabetes: A Review Article

Abstract

Background: Despite the benefits of diabetes patient education, it is imperative to analyze the status of researches in this field and identify research gaps and priorities if our limited health resources are to be used wisely and effectively. This study is a part of Iran Diabetes Research Roadmap study to find the knowledge gap in the field of diabetes patient education in Iran.

Methods: All publications of Iranian authors about diabetes patient education in national (SID, IranMedex, and Magiran) and international journals (PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus) up to 2015 were reviewed. Overall, 306 studies were categorized by subject category, methodology, WHO classification and NHMRC criteria.

Results: Most numbers of samples in the subject category were about the effect of self-care training (28%) and then model-based educational interventions (13%). Moreover, trend in publication rate of papers related to the patient education topic is relatively increasing with time, despite some difficulties points. Half of the papers were cross-sectional and 46% of them were interventional studies.

Conclusion: Although trend of papers subjects was relatively scattered, most of patient education studies in Iran were about assessing the positive effects of self-care education similar to other countries. However, quality assessment for all studies should be carried out in future research.