Impact of disease acceptance on the quality of life of patients with diabetes during the COVID-19 pandemic

Aim
The aim of the study was to assess the degree of disease acceptance and the level of quality of life of people with diabetes, indicating correlations during the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic.

Material and methods
The study involved 115 diabetic patients awaiting an appointment at a diabetes clinic. The Polish version of the standardized WHOQOL-Bref questionnaire and the Acceptance of Illness Scale (AIS) were used to collect the research material. The data was statistically analyzed in SPSS Statistics 27.0. In all calculations, the level of significance was p < 0.05.

Results
Statistically significant, positive, and moderately strong correlations were found between acceptance of the disease and satisfaction with the quality of life (r≤0.37) and quality of life in the social (r≤0.36) and environmental (r≤0.43) spheres. On the other hand, statistically significant, positive, and strong correlations were found between acceptance of the disease and satisfaction with one's health (r≤0.52) and quality of life in the somatic (r≤0.67) and psychological (r≤0.52) spheres, which means that higher acceptance of the disease is associated with a higher quality of life for people with diabetes.

Conclusions
Diabetes has been recognized as one of the greatest challenges in global health and social care. The acceptance of the disease is of great importance for the quality of life of people with diabetes, which has a positive effect on all examined spheres of quality of life and satisfaction with the quality of life and health. Patients with diabetes during the COVID-19 pandemic are people with a significantly average level of disease acceptance.