Assessing the effectiveness of an educational program for patients with gestational diabetes in Assiut University

Objective
The aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of an individualized educational program in improving patient’s awareness, knowledge, and attitude and to assess its role in reducing the burden of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM).
Patients and methods
A prospective study was conducted on women diagnosed to have GDM at 24–28 weeks of gestation according to The Diabetes In Pregnancy Study group India criteria 2015 (2 h blood glucose ≥140 mg/dl) between December 2015 and December 2016 who were enrolled into an individualized GDM educational program. A modified and shortened version of a validated questionnaire developed by Carolan and colleagues was tested before and after education to evaluate the feedback of education. Follow-up was every 2 weeks till labor to assess awareness together with both maternal and fetal outcomes.
Results
A total of 60 pregnant women diagnosed to have GDM were included. The questions that were answered correctly in the post-test by more than 50% of the participants fell into these categories: definition of GDM (100%), associated risk factors (75%), way of diagnosis (83.3%), management of GDM (71.7%), and postpartum follow-up (56.7%). As regards fetal and maternal outcome it was observed that both weight gain and glycemic control were better in the well-educated group versus other groups (=0.02, 0.01, respectively).
Conclusion
Health education plays an important role in increasing patients awareness regarding the GDM risk and its proper management in order to reduce its complications both for the mother and the fetus.