Background and aims: Insulin is one of the challenging aspects of diabetes treatment. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of using video technology by pharmacist on reduction of insulin pen errors in Patients with diabetes type 2 who referred to the Ahwaz diabetes clinic.
Methods: In a quasi-experimental study, 130 diabetic patients who initiated insulin pen during one year (2018) included the study if they met inclusion criteria. Then, they were divided into two intervention and control groups by random allocation method.
A video was used to educate the intervention group or their companion. A month later and three months after the date of the first interview, the two groups were re-invited to do the post-test.
Results: The average age of patients was 54.02(SD, 10.92) years. The average duration of insulin pen initiation was 4.69 (SD, 0.93) months. Video training has a significant effect on the reduction of errors including injection in same site (from63.1% to36.9%), arbitrary change in dosage or frequency of injection (16.9% to 7.7%) and the missing of insulin use (63.1% to 47.7%) in the intervention group. The mean of a needle use reduced from 4.36 to 2.20 times in intervention group. There was a significant difference between the two groups in incidence of pen insulin errors after education (P<0.05).
Conclusion: Despite a significant reduction in errors in some areas, the incidence of insulin pen use errors is still high, suggesting interference from other factors beyond the level of knowledge of patients.