Objective: Diabetes mellitus is a chronic metabolic disease requiring long-term lifestyle modification and medical treatment. Inadequate disease management may lead to serious acute and chronic complications, increased morbidity, and reduced quality of life. Treatment adherence in diabetes is a multifactorial process influenced by pharmacological regimens, disease awareness, education level, and sociodemographic characteristics. Previous studies have shown that insufficient knowledge about the disease and low awareness are associated with poor glycemic control and accelerated disease progression. Given the lifelong nature of diabetes treatment, difficulties in disease acceptance and sustaining treatment adherence are common. Understanding how patients’ awareness, education, and self-perceived knowledge relate to treatment adherence and laboratory outcomes may explain poor glycemic control. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the relationship between treatment adherence, disease awareness, and disease progression by analyzing questionnaire data and laboratory findings of patients admitted to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University Training and Research Hospital. Methods: This study was conducted using a questionnaire-based survey administered to 500 patients diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus for at least three months who attended Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University Training and Research Hospital. Results: Of the 500 diabetic patients included in the study, 284 (56.8%) were female and 216 (43.2%) were male. The mean age of the participants was 59.7 ± 13.1 years. The mean HbA1c level was 7.7 ±1.59, while the mean Morisky adherence score was 5.4 ± 1.7. Low adherence was observed in 259 patients (51.8%), moderate adherence in 172 patients (34.4%), and high adherence in 69 patients (13.8%). A statistically significant difference was found between Morisky adherence categories and HbA1c levels (p < 0.001). HbA1c levels were highest among patients with low adherence and lowest among those with high adherence. Conclusion: HbA1c levels were significantly higher in patients with low Morisky adherence scores, whereas the lowest HbA1c levels were observed in patients with high adherence. Additionally, the proportion of patients with high adherence was significantly greater among those receiving oral antidiabetic therapy alone compared to those receiving combined insulin and oral antidiabetic treatment.
This study was approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee of RECEP TAYYİP ERDOĞAN UNIVERSITY Hospital (Approval No: 2023/163). Written informed consent was obtained from all participants. The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hatice Beyazal Polat is gratefully acknowledged for her valuable contributions and guidance during the preparation of this study.
| Primary Language | English |
|---|---|
| Subjects | Internal Diseases |
| Journal Section | Research Article |
| Authors | |
| Submission Date | January 18, 2026 |
| Acceptance Date | February 12, 2026 |
| Publication Date | March 10, 2026 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.46310/tjim.1866507 |
| IZ | https://izlik.org/JA52WF74WM |
| Published in Issue | Year 2026 Volume: 8 |
General information
Turkish Journal of Internal Medicine (TJIM) is an international, independent, double-blind, peer-reviewed, open-access, and online publishing journal, which aims to publish papers on all the related areas of clinical medicine. Manuscripts must describe original data that has not been published previously nor submitted for publication elsewhere. Manuscripts that adhere to the TJIM submission guidelines and are deemed appropriate for the scope of the journal are sent to two reviewers who are specialists in the field. The members of the TJIM Executive Editorial Board who discuss the suitability of then consider the reviewers’ comments on each submission. The final decision for all submitted manuscripts rests with the Editor-in-Chief. Editorial Board of the Turkish Journal of Internal Medicine complies with the criteria of the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The journal operates on a continuous publication model, with articles published online as soon as they are ready.
Publishing Principles
Turkish Journal of Internal Medicine (TJIM) is an international, double-blind peer-reviewed open-access journal dedicated to publishing high-quality research articles in Clinical Medicine.
The TJIM is accepting manuscripts covered the subject areas, including but not limited to the following fields:
Cancer,
Cardiology,
Chest Disease,
Clinical Cancer Research,
Clinical Cardiovascular Research,
Clinical Endocrinology,
Clinical Pathology,
Clinical Immunology and Immunopathology,
Clinical Nutritional Research,
Critical Care and Emergency Medicine,
Dietetics,
Endocrinology,
Experimental Cancer Research,
Experimental Microbiology,
Gastroenterology and Hepatology,
Genetics,
Geriatrics,
General Medicine,
Hematology,
Immunology,
Internal Medicine,
Infectious Diseases,
Nutrition and Metabolism,
Metabolic Disorders,
Nephrology,
Oncology,
Respiratory Diseases,
Rheumatology
Instructions for Authors
General information
Institutional review board/ethics committee approval (IRB)
If a study involves either human subjects, human-derived materials, and/or medical records, authors must include in the Methods section either a statement that an Institutional Review Board (IRB)/Ethics Committee approval has been obtained or a statement that the IRB/Ethics Committee had ruled that approval was not required for the study. When reporting experiments conducted with humans indicate that the procedures were in accordance with ethical standards set forth by the committee that oversees human experimentation. Approval of research protocols by the relevant ethics committee, in accordance with international agreements (Helsinki Declaration of 1975, revised 2002 available at http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm, “Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals” www.nap.edu/catalog/5140.html/), is required for all experimental, clinical, and drug studies. Patient names, initials, and hospital identification numbers should not be used. Manuscripts reporting the results of experimental investigations conducted with humans must state that the study protocol received institutional review board approval and that the participants provided informed consent.
Copyright transfer
The publisher retains the copyright to all material published in the TJIM. The publisher is not responsible for any legal claims arising from the publication of a manuscript. A Copyright Transfer Agreement form must be submitted together with the manuscript at the time of initial submission. All authors/corresponding authors must sign the form, indicating that all authors agree to the publication of their manuscript in the TJIM should their manuscript be accepted. A scanned file (PDF, TIFF, or JPEG) of the signed Copyright Transfer Agreement may be submitted at the time of online submission of the manuscript. The Editorial Office must receive the Copyright Transfer Agreement before any action can be taken regarding the manuscript.
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CC BY-NC-ND includes the following elements:
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Conflict of interest policy
Authors are required to disclose all conflicts of interest that may have influenced their research or the preparation and writing of their manuscript. Conflicts of interest may include both financial and non-financial relationships. Because it is often difficult to determine whether a conflict of interest exists, the Editorial Board requests that all potential conflicts be declared at the time of initial submission of the manuscript on the title page. Other pertinent relationships that may be relevant should be disclosed to the Editor-in-Chief in the cover letter at the time of submission.
Manuscript submission
All manuscripts must conform to the language and writing style of the TJIM. This includes submission of the manuscript with correct medical English as well as submission of any figures and tables in the formats specified. Authors should submit their manuscript and accompanying material to the TJIM via the online Editorial Manager system by logging on http://dergipark.org.tr/ and uploading all manuscript files following the instructions given.
Authorship
All authors should have been directly involved in the work described in the manuscript. Additional contributors to a manuscript, such as professors or others who gave helpful advice or companies that donated material, may be thanked in the Acknowledgments section following the main text. TJIM does not permit two or more authors to be “equal contributors” to a manuscript.
Permission
All figures, tables, and text passages that have been previously published require permission from the copyright owner(s) for the TJIM. All expenses related to obtaining such permission must be borne by the authors. By signing the copyright form, you state that TJIM owns the copyright to the material in your article. Permission must be obtained for any material to which the authors do not own the full copyright. No material such as clinical images or charts, photos, and graphs as well as images of devices that may have been obtained from their producers, can be published without such permission. To secure the right to publish material that you do not own, contact the holder of the copyright (journal in which it was published, book publishers, or company that developed the instrument) by e-mail describing in detail the material you wish to use and stating that you wish to include that material in your manuscript (including the title The copyright owner will usually reply stating that permission has been granted. A copy of the reply must be forwarded to the TJIM offices with the number of your manuscript and a description of the materials in question. Most copyright permissions will specify conditions relating to the way in which reference to the permission should be stated. These conditions must be adhered to in full, otherwise, the permission may be invalid. Note that in some instances copyright owners may require payment. In these cases, the authors must bear all such costs. As papers cannot be changed once accepted, authors are advised to apply for copyright permission early to prevent the possibility of the paper having to be withdrawn from publication. Note that receiving permission may take up to eight weeks and that the paper cannot be processed for publication before such permission has been granted.
Title page
The title page should present a title (and running title) that includes, if appropriate, the study design, and should list the full names and institutional addresses for all authors.
Types of Papers
All papers published by the Turkish Journal of Internal Medicine are peer-reviewed.
Original Article
An article is a full-length report on original primary research that will interest the journal's readers. They must describe significant and original observations.
Review Article
The review article is a comprehensive analysis of specific topics and recent developments in a particular area. A review should focus on recent research and issues. It should also include the authors' opinion on how to approach the topic/situation under discussion and what is needed to advance the field in the future.
Communications
Short (brief) communications are short papers that focus on a particular aspect of a problem or a new finding that is expected to have a significant impact and present original and important material. Short communication is not intended to publish preliminary results. They may be given rapid publication. Short communication should not be subdivided. The paper should include an abstract, main body of text (combined methods, results, and discussion in a single section), and references.
Rapid communications are similar to short communications. These are usually articles used to disseminate preliminary results that are original, of high interest, and likely to have a significant impact on the relevant scientific community. In the healthcare field, this can include information that is urgent from a public health perspective or findings in a rapidly changing specialty. Their format is similar to short communications.
Case Report
Case reports and case studies should present significant new insights or cases with an unusual and noteworthy course. It is recommended that case reports include an up-to-date review of all previous cases in the field. The novelty of the case(s) may lie in the phenotype, the presentation, the investigation, and/or the management.
Letter
Letters are encouraged if they directly concern articles recently published in the journal. If accepted, the editors reserve the right to submit such letters to the authors of the articles concerned prior to publication, in order to permit them to respond in the same issue of the journal.
Manuscript preparation
Manuscripts should be created using Microsoft Word and be double-spaced with 2.5-cm margins on all sides. Pages should be numbered consecutively, with consecutive line numbering from the first through the last page, using the automatic numbering function of the software. The recommended font is Times New Roman and the recommended font size is 11 points. The entire manuscript for a full-length article, excluding references and tables, should be no more than 6000 words. Do not use field functions. For indenting, use tab stops, not the space bar. For tables, use the table function, not spreadsheets. For equations, use either the equation editor or MathType.
Abstracts
A structured abstract of no more than 350 words is required. The Abstract for all manuscripts except case reports and review articles should be divided into Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusions.
Keywords
Keywords are required for indexing and abstracting services. Up to ten words should be listed.
Main text
The main text of an original article should be divided into INTRODUCTION, METHODS, RESULTS, DISCUSSION, and CONCLUSION sections. The case report should include an abstract, introduction, case report, discussion, and references. Abbreviations must be defined following their first use in the Abstract as well as in the main text and in the figures and tables. Only commonly accepted abbreviations should be used. Drug and chemical names should be stated using generic or standard chemical nomenclature. Units of measurement should conform to the International System (SI); however, clinical data may be presented in conventional units where deemed more appropriate.
Headings and subheadings
Main headings (INTRODUCTION, METHODS, RESULTS, DISCUSSION, etc.) and the word REFERENCES should be written in capital letters. In subheadings, only the first letter of each word should be capitalized.
Footnotes
Footnotes may be used to give additional information, but should not consist of a reference citation, which is not included in the reference list at the end of the manuscript, and must not contain figures or tables. Footnotes should be numbered consecutively and separately for the title page, the main text, and each table. Footnotes should be indicated by superscript lowercase letters or numbers, or by asterisks for significance values and other statistical data. Footnotes should be positioned at the bottom of the page or table in which they appear.
Tables, Graphics, and Illustrations
Tables, graphics, and illustrations should be numbered in Arabic numerals in the text. The places of the illustrations should be signed in the text.
Tables
Illustrations (Figures)
Legends for Illustrations (Figures)
Article Information Form
The article information form should be written after the text, before the references. Explain the following headings in detail.
Acknowledgments: The Acknowledgments section should follow the main text. If data from other published sources are used, the authors must obtain permission as explained above and state full acknowledgment as indicated by the copyright owners. Acknowledgments should also be made to research grants, technicians, and colleagues who assisted in the study; to individuals or companies who provided materials; and to mentors who provided advice and encouragement.
Financial Disclosure:
Conflicts of interest:
Ethical Declaration:
Artificial Intelligence Statement:
Author Contributions: (The statement "Authors' contribution to the article is equal" is not accepted.) To be considered as an author of an article, a writer must have contributed to at least 3 of the following. If any of the following headings are not relevant to your work, please mark them as "None".
Conceptualization: FA, SA;
Methodology: FA, SA;
Software: TA;
Validation: FA, TA;
Formal analysis: SA;
Investigation: FA;
Resources: TA;
Data curation: FA;
Writing – original draft: SA;
Writing – review & editing: FA;
Visualization: SA;
Supervision: None;
Project administration: FA, SA;
Funding acquisition: None.;
Reference Style and Format
For journals
Articles in journals
For the published article from the journal, which is placed and abbreviated in Medline:
For the published article from the journal that is not placed and is not abbreviated in Medline:
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Article with published erratum
Volume with supplement
Issue with the supplement
Volume with part
Issue with part
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No volume or issue
Journal article on the Internet
For books and other monographs
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Translated book
Chapter in a book
Conference proceedings
Dissertation (Thesis)
Poster(s)
Patent
Homepage/Website
Proofreading
After TJIM has prepared the layout of the article, it is sent to all authors for proofreading. All authors must view the pre-publication version of the article and approve its publication.
Multicenter clinical trials
TJIM welcomes the submission of manuscripts reporting results of multicenter clinical trials. These manuscripts may be submitted with authorship in one of the following styles:
In each case, one individual must serve as the corresponding author, and the names of all individuals specifically involved in the preparation of the manuscript should be listed under the heading Writing Committee following the Acknowledgments section. This should be followed by a list of investigators from each institution under the heading Study Group Investigators. Each author and each Writing Committee member must sign the Copyright Agreement and Author Acknowledgement Form.
Content responsibility
Content and scientific accuracy of all manuscripts, as well as of any electronic supplementary material, are the sole responsibility of the authors. No responsibility will be assumed by TJIM for any legal claim arising from injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of product liability, negligence, or other circumstances; nor from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the published material. No test or procedure should be carried out unless the reader judges it to be safe. Independent verification of all diagnoses and drug dosages should be performed. Discussions, views, and recommendations regarding medical procedures, drug choices, and dosages are the sole responsibility of the authors.
Disclaimer
TJIM does not accept or publish advertisements. Any mention of commercial products, if it occurs within scholarly content, does not imply endorsement by the journal.
Section A: Publication and authorship
1. All submitted papers are subject to a strict peer-review process by at least two international reviewers that are experts in the area of the particular paper. Reviewers are being selected by Associate Editors and Editor in Chief. The author also can propose reviewers for some journals and article types.
2. The factors that are taken into account in review are relevance, originality, readability, statistical validity, and language.
3. The possible decisions include acceptance, minor revisions, major revision, or rejection.
4. If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted.
5. Rejected articles will not be re-reviewed.
6. The paper acceptance is constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism.
7. No research can be included in more than one publication, whether within the same journal or in another journal.
Section B: Authors’ responsibilities
1. Authors must certify that their manuscript is their original work.
2. Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere, or even submitted and been in reviewed in another journal.
3. The authors must participate in the peer-review process and follow the comments.
4. Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
5. All Authors mentioned in the paper must have significantly contributed to the research. The level of their contribution also must be defined in the “Authors’ Contributions” section of the article.
6. The authors must state that all data in the paper are real and authentic.
7. The authors must notify the Editors of any conflicts of interest.
8. The authors must identify all sources used in the creation of their manuscript.
9. Authors must report any errors they discover in their published paper to the Editors.
10. Authors must not use irrelevant sources that may help other researches/journals.
11. Authors cannot withdraw their articles within the review process or after submission, or they must pay the penalty defined by the publisher.
Section C: Peer review/responsibility for the reviewers
1. Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.
2. Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author. No self-knowledge of the author(s) must affect their comments and decision.
3. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments in 500 to 1000 words.
4. Reviewers may identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
5. Reviewers should also call to the Editor in Chief’s attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
6. Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
Section D: Editorial responsibilities
1. Editors (Associate Editors or Editor in Chief) have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.
2. Editors are responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication.
3. Editors should always consider the needs of the authors and the readers when attempting to improve the publication.
4. Editors should guarantee the quality of the papers and the integrity of the academic record.
5. Editors should publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.
6. Editors should have a clear picture of research funding sources.
7. Editors should base their decisions solely one the papers’ importance, originality, clarity, and relevance to publication’s scope.
8. Editors should not reverse their decisions nor overturn the ones of previous editors without serious reason.
9. Editors should preserve the anonymity of reviewers (in half blind peer review journals).
10. Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to international accepted ethical guidelines.
11. Editors should only accept a paper when reasonably certain.
12. Editors should act if they suspect misconduct, whether a paper is published or unpublished, and make all reasonable attempts to persist in obtaining a resolution to the problem.
13. Editors should not reject papers based on suspicions; they should have proof of misconduct.
14. Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between staff, authors, reviewers, and board members.
15. Editors must not change their decision after submitting a decision (especially after reject or accept) unless they have a serious reason.
Section E: Publishing Ethics Issues
Editorial Board of the Turkish Journal of Internal Medicine complies with the criteria of the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
1. All editorial members, reviewers, and authors must confirm and obey rules defined by COPE.
2. The corresponding author is the main owner of the article so she/he can withdraw the article when it is incomplete (before entering the review process or when a revision is asked for).
3. Authors cannot make major changes in the article after acceptance without a serious reason.
4. All editorial members and authors must will to publish any kind of corrections honestly and completely.
5. Any notes of plagiarism, fraudulent data, or any other kinds of fraud must be reported completely to COPE.
• Turkish Journal of Internal Medicine (TJIM) does not charge any fees for manuscript submission, peer review, editorial handling, page layout/typesetting, or publication (including page or color charges).
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• All published articles are freely accessible to read and download.
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• All TJIM content is digitally archived and preserved via the LOCKSS (Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) system through TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM DergiPark.
• In line with the journal’s publication policy, announcements, advertisements, sponsorships, and similar content are neither accepted nor published.
• TJIM does not offer a reprint service for professional-quality reproductions of articles.
• All expenses of TJIM are covered by the publisher.