Levels of Patient Satisfaction with Nutritionist-Patient Interactions and Understanding of Diet Instructions among Diabetes Mellitus Patients in Panama

Background: Overall, nutritional care and its impact within the quality management sector is a rarely studied topic, with direct outcomes in the economy. This is especially true in Panama, as the funding for research on such topics is somewhat lacking. Type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) is a chronic disease associated with poor eating habits and a sedentary lifestyle. In Panama, DM affects a growing subset of the population, and without awareness regarding proper lifestyle management or efficient quality of care regarding the disease, patients are likely to experience further complications. This, in turn, would lead to significant economic strain on the government of Panama, as the government is responsible for funding treatment and medication for this disease. The quality of care provided in public DM treatment institutions of Panama is a completely unexplored subject, thus highlighting a need to study the efficiency of current treatment programs.
Objectives: This study aimed to assess the quality of nutritional care among type 2 diabetes mellitus patients who attended diabetes clinics of the National Health Insurance of Panama using two quality measures: (1) levels of patient satisfaction with regard to dietitian-patient interactions from five dimensions: technical expertise, interpersonal skills, communication, consultation time, and access/availability; and (2) levels of patient understanding of diet instructions.
Methods: This was a cross-sectional study. It was carried out by conducting a questionnaire survey to evaluate the impacts of patient characteristics on patient satisfaction with respect to nutritionist-patient interactions as well as patient understanding of diet instructions. A total of 400 patients participated in this study. Descriptive analyses, logistic regression model and multiple regression model were carried out to study the relationship between socio-demographic characteristics and the level of patient satisfaction with nutritionist-patient interactions, and the level of understanding of diet instructions.
Results: In this study, patients were very satisfied with the nutritionist-patient interactions and had a high level of understanding of diet instructions. Furthermore, the findings of this study showed no association between socio-demographic characteristics and the level of patient satisfaction with nutritionist-patient interactions, nor the level of understanding of diet instructions.
Conclusion: Overall, the results indicated that this association could have been affected by factors not considered in this study which include socio-demographic behavioral and cultural differences. To determine de level of understanding of diet instructions, there is still a need for a ‘gold’ standard instrument adapted to different countries, cultures, and preferences.