Identifying solutions to psychological insulin resistance: An international study
Journal of Diabetes and its Complications, January 17, 2019
The American Diabetes Association’s DiabetesPro SmartBrief newsletter has highlighted new research on ways that health care professionals may be able to help people with type 2 diabetes overcome psychological insulin resistance (PIR) – the resistance to initiating insulin therapy. PIR is a widespread phenomenon, and the reasons for it have been widely explored in medical literature. However, there has been less attention paid to the strategies used by health care professionals that may be effective in overcoming PIR. Identifying such strategies is especially important given the negative effects associated with delays in starting insulin therapy or using it intermittently.
A research team including Analysis Group Vice President Urvi Desai conducted a multinational study of people with type 2 diabetes who were unwilling to begin insulin therapy but eventually did so. Their goal was to identify, from the patients’ perspective, the actions of health care professionals that most effectively facilitate adoption of basal insulin.
The results are summarized in “Identifying solutions to psychological insulin resistance: An international study,” published in the Journal of Diabetes and its Complications and reported on in the ADA newsletter. The researchers found that among the five types of strategies that were employed by health care professionals, the most effective actions for overcoming PIR were demonstrating the injection process, explaining insulin’s benefits, and having a collaborative style of interaction with their patients. Specifically, patients who rated these strategies as more helpful were less likely to either delay insulin therapy or to interrupt it once initiated.
Read the ADA DiabetesPro SmartBrief article
Authors
Polonsky W, Fisher L, Hessler D, Stuckey Snoeke F, Tang T, Hermanns N, Mundet X, Silva M, Sturt J, Okazaki K, Hadjiyianni I, Cao D, Ivanova J, Desai U, Perez-Nieves M