A Pilot Study on Medication Adherence, Patient Satisfaction, KAP and Quality of Life of Hypertensive Patients

Aim: The present study was designed as a pilot study to assess the prevalence and reasons for occurrence of hypertension and identify the various treatment options prescribed and to determine the patients’ awareness and adherence to the treatment. Materials and Methods: An institution based cross-sectional study for a period of one month was conducted among the patients of Department of General Medicine, DM WIMS Multispecialty Hospital, Wayanad, Kerala by using standard questionnaires. 51 patients who meet the inclusion criteria were enrolled in the study. Well-structured questionnaires and standard tools such as Patient Satisfaction Scale (SAPS), Hill-Bone medication adherence scale (HB-MAS), WHOQOL-BREF were utilized to collect the data. Collected data was scrutinized by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 15.0). Student t-test and one-way ANOVA were employed to test for associations at 95% confidence interval. P<0.05 were considered significant. Results: The Results indicated rise of prevalence of hypertension in rural regions. Middle ged male group was mostly affected. Majority of the participants were affected with Grade III hypertension for more than f ive years and also affected with other chronic illness. All the study subjects were treated with multi-therapy regimen with dose frequency of BID. Results showed a lesser level of treatment satisfaction, medication adherence, KAP and quality of life of study population. Conclusion: The results strongly supported the need of the patient counselling by clinical pharmacists to improve the analysed parameters. Hopefully, future study with larger sample size with proper patient counselling could provide a significant outcome