Abstract:
The purposes of this descriptive research were to study the relationships between selected factors, such as age, duration of diabetes mellitus, comorbidity, instrument activity of daily living, drug compliance, medical conditions, social support, knowledge of hypoglycemia and hypoglycemia in older persons with diabetes mellitus. Participants were 140 older persons with diabetes mellitus from emergency room from four tertierycare hospitals in Bangkok, and were selected using multi-stage random sampling technique. Research instruments were demographic questionnaire, drug compliance questionnaire, instrument activity of daily living questionnaire, social support questionnaire, and knowledge of hypoglycemia questionnaire which were tested for content validity and reliability. The Cronbachs alpha coefficients of drug compliance questionnaire, social support questionnaire, and knowledge of hypoglycemia questionnaire were .73, .88 and .72 respectively. The data were analyzed using Pearsons product moment correlation coefficient. The results revealed that : 1. 89.50% of hypoglycemic in older persons with diabetes mellitus had blood glucose less than 50 mg.% (x-bar = 37.14 mg.%, S.D. = 1.17) 94.80% had neuroglycopenic symptoms and 47.90% had moderate hypoglycemia 2. age was negative correlated with hypoglycemia in older persons with diabetes mellitus at the level of .05 (r = -.180) 3. knowlage of hypoglycemia was positive correlated with hypoglycemia in older persons with diabetes mellitus at the level of .05 (r = .169) 4. comorbidity, duration of diabetes mellitus, instrument activity of daily living, drug compliance, medical conditions and social support were not correlated with hypoglycemia in older persons with diabetes mellitus.