SELF-CARE PRACTICES AND ASSOCIATED FACTORS AMONG ADULT HYPERTENSIVE PATIENTS ATTENDING AT DEBRE BERHAN REFERRAL HOSPITAL IN NORTH SHOA, AMHARA REGIONAL STATE, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Background: Hypertension is one of the non-communicable diseases that become a public health concern and cause early mortality around the globe. It has an insidious effect and became the problem in the world which ranks three in causing disability. Poor management of hypertension is a very important cause for various cardiovascular problems. Besides, it raises the occurrence of different diseases in our body. As a result, it has a paramount advantage of monitoring hypertension to reduce the outcome of the disease through compliance to self-care practices. A few researches had carried out to study the common domains of self-care practices like low salt intake, physical exercise and adherence to medication. However, comprehensive assessment on domains of self-care by adding the basic elements of self-care like social support and stress management of hypertensive patient, whether they use self BP monitoring or not, support of the patient by family to understand and properly adhered to self-care practices and control the problem is not well studied. Objectives: To assess self-care practices and associated factors among adult hypertensive patient attending in Debre Berhan Referral Hospital. Methods: A hospital based cross-sectional study was conducted. Standardized questionnaire was adapted from previous study on self-care activities and study done on lifestyle modification of hypertensive patients. First the data were checked manually for their completeness and consistency. Data were entered in to Epi-Data 3.1 and then it was exported to SPSS version 22 for data processing and analysis. Descriptive summary like frequency and graphical presentation was done. Those which shows significant association (p-value ≤0.2) obtained by bivariate analysis were considered in the multivariate analysis. In multivariate analysis statistical significant variables were those which had p-value <0.05. Results: The prevalence of good self-care practices of the participants was 24.4 % with 95% CI (19.7%, 28.3%). Patients without concurrent illness were 1.5 times more likely (AOR=1.5: 95% CI; (1.276-1.855) perform self-care practices. Similarly, patients sixty years old and above were four times (AOR= 4.243; 95% CI: 1.744-10.322) more likely to have good self-care practices about hypertension than patients with the age group 21-39 years old. Patients who had available blood pressure measurement apparatus at home or nearby were 3.4 times (AOR=3.358; 95% CI; 1.673- 6.740) more commonly practice self-care than patients who didn’t have. Conclusions: - The level of self-care practices was found to be low among adult hypertensive patients. Thus, patients are at higher risk of getting complications especially target organ damages like heart, kidney and brain. The study shows relevance of prevention of comorbidities, accessibility of BP apparatus, and the need of social support. Thus, effort should be done to prevent comorbidities, make medical services accessible and maintain social support