Validity of the Diabetes, Hypertension and Hyperlipidaemia (DHL) Knowledge Instrument among Medical Students of Karachi

BACKGROUND: While there have been a number of studies on DM, hypertension and hyperlipidaemia, an instrument which assesses knowledge based on all three conditions has neither been established nor authorized in Pakistan. Hence, the focus of this study was to establish a pre- tested extensive questionnaire to evaluate medical students’ understanding of DM, hypertension, hyperlipidaemia and their medications for use.

METHODS: A pre-validated and pre-tested DHL instrument was employed on 250 students of Dow Medical and Sindh Medical College and on 45 physicians working in a leading teaching hospital of Karachi. The DHL knowledge instrument was then distributed a second time to the very same set of students, after a period of 2 months, at the end of the foundation module, once they had received some basic formal medical education including diabetes and CVS diseases.

RESULTS: The overall internal consistency for the DHL instrument failed to comply with the set standard of more than or equal to 0.7 as our results yielded Cronbach’s α of 0.6. Overall the average difficulty factor of 28 questions is 0.41, which highlighted that the instrument was moderately tough. The mean scores for all domains were substantially lower in the students section in comparison to that of the professional section, which had remarkable impact on the overall mean(SD) knowledge score (40.58 ± 14.63 vs. 63.49 ± 06.67 ; p value = 0.00).

CONCLUSION: The instrument can be used to recognize people who require educational programs and keep an account of the changes with the passage of time as it could help in differentiating the knowledge levels among its participants based on their educational status.