Diabetologist's perspective on practice of evidence based diabetes management in India

Diabetes demands early diagnosis, prompt treatment, continuous monitoring and follow up. Physicians play a pivotal role in diabetes management. However, evidence suggests that sub-optimal knowledge of guidelines and other issues may lead to ineffective management and poor patient outcomes. The aim of this research was to identify clinical diabetologist's perspectives on evidence based diabetes management, benefits of and barriers to the practice of evidence based guidelines in management of type 2 diabetes. Clinical diabetologists were administered a semi-structured questionnaire. Qualitative responses were analysed to identify key words, phrases and concepts from respondents. Majority of diabetologist (78.2%) preferred ADA guidelines alone or in combination with others guidelines where as 12.7% diabetologist follow all the guidelines on case by case basis. 27% and 25% diabetologists opined that guidelines ensure uniform standard of care across patient and achievement of diabetes management goals respectively. Poor awareness among physicians (22.7%), western guidelines being not applicable to Indian patients (22.7%), cost to patient (18.2%) were some of the barrier to practice of evidence based diabetes management. Some of the mechanism suggested to improve the practice of evidence based diabetes management included education of physicians in EBM (28.9%), making practice of evidence based guidelines legally binding (10.5%) and wider dissemination of existing guidelines (7.8%).