"Factors Affecting Compliance of Hypertensive Patients toward Therapeutic Regimen"

Abstract

Hypertension is one of the most important cardiovascular risk factor but its control is still a challenge all around the world. Control of blood pressure can reduce cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, so the compliance to antihypertensive drugs and life style modification play an important role for the control of hypertension. This study was aimed to assess factors affecting treatment compliance with antihypertensive therapy guided by the use of Health Belief Model variables among hypertensive patients. The study was conducted at the Cardiology outpatients' clinic at Ain Shams University Hospital. Collecting data from simple random sampling a total of 135 hypertensive patients who are using antihypertensive treatment that attended the Cardiology outpatients' clinic at Ain Shams University Hospital. The results of this study illustrated that the hypertensive patients participated in this study showed low compliance to antihypertensive treatment, the most significant factors with demographic characteristic was sex (female being compliant) and with the guide of Health Belief Model (HBM) the strongest predictor was perceived barrier to antihypertensive treatment, and there was statistically significant relation between over all patients compliance & their information about therapeutic regimen including: side effect of drugs & how to deal with it, health diet, possible complication. The study recommended that the nurses should give heath education to patients to every clinic visit about the therapeutic regimen including medications, diet, exercise and activity, early warning signs, self-care and precipitating factors that should be avoided. Also, follow-up for the patients' compliance with therapeutic regimen by a community health nurse should be done periodically. � 2015, Life Science Journal. All rights reserved.