Introduction:

Self-care is an essential element in the control of clinical activity in patients with type II diabetes mellitus.

Objective:

To carry out an educational intervention to increase the level of knowledge of diabetic patients about self-care of the disease.

Methods:

An applied, quasi-experimental research was carried out; where the universe consisted of 115 patients with a confirmed diagnosis of type II diabetes mellitus. The sample was made up of 90 patients; the level of knowledge and glycemic control of the patients, their characteristics and those of the disease were determined. The Diabetes Knowledge Questionnaire was used to determine the level of knowledge about self-care. McNemar's non-parametric test was applied to identify changes caused by the educational intervention implemented.

Results:

Average age of 53.87 years with a predominance of females (73.33%). At the beginning of the investigation, overweight patients (53.33%), diabetes complications (68.89%), knowledge level between fair and bad (60.0%) and glycemic control between admissible and inadequate (72.22%) predominated. After implementing the educational intervention, 81.33% presented a level of knowledge between good and excellent and 56.56% of the patients presented a glycemic control between adequate and normal.

Conclusions:

It is concluded that the educational intervention implemented caused significant changes in the increase in the level of knowledge of patients about diabetes self-care.

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