Effect of a Telephone and Text Message Follow-Up Program on Medication Adherence among Patients with Diabetes Mellitus: A randomized controlled trial.

Medication adherence is an essential factor in the effective management of the patient with the diabetic disease, especially in developing countries. Recently, the telenursing program has various applications in health care services all over the world. This study determined the effect of a telephone and text message follow-up program on Medication Adherence among patients with diabetes mellitus.This was a controlled trial design on patients with diabetes who were hospitalized at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin-City, Edo State. This study was conducted among 100 diabetic patients through census method and the participants were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS) was used for data collection. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and independent t-test, chi-square, and repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) at 0.05 significant levels. The findings of the study shows that prior to the intervention, there is no significant difference in the medication adherence level of the two groups. However, it also shows that there is a significant difference between the mean score of the experimental and control group after the intervention(p˂ 0.001). Thus, the telephone and text message follow up program is effective in promoting the level of medication adherence among diabetic patient