JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

To explore the real needs on self-management from the patients' perspective, and to carry out an efficient two-way health education between patients and physicians, the study applied Crawler-Based data collection on four online health communities (OHCs), we involved 1605 text records extracted from Chinese patients with diabetes from March 2020-July 2020. The text analysis applied the Ground Theory to discover the patients’ concerning issues into three themes, seven subthemes, and 25 entries. Altogether, 1108 posts (69%) consulted the issues on disease treatment (theme B) and mainly asked the medicine use (B2 and B3; n=686), including medication choice, medication mode, side effects, and post-medication effects. In addition, 222 posts (theme A; 13.8%) concerned the explanation of disease etiology and knowledge about diabetes, and 275 posts (theme C; 17.8%) presented the lifestyle changes and various restrictions on life brought about by the disease. The study also analyzed the root reasons behind patients’ needs: the gap between patients and physicians of COM— Conflict between over-ideal patients and disrupted daily life; Opposition between everyday logic and medical rationality; and Misalignment between patients’ actual needs current health education. Our findings suggest an urgent need to improve diabetes health education and guideline development strategies to develop health management strategies from a patient perspective to bridge the misalignment between patient needs and current health education.