Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Association between Knowledge and Drug Adherence in Patients with Hypertension in Quetta, Pakistan

F Saleem¹ , M A Hassali¹, A A Shafie¹, A G Awad², S Bashir³

¹Discipline of Social and Administrative Pharmacy, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Minden, Penang, Malaysia; ²University of Toronto, Humber River Regional Hospital, 2175 Keele Street, Suite 243A, Toronto, Ontario, M6M 3Z4, Canada; ³Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sargodha, Punjab, Pakistan.

For correspondence:- F Saleem Email: azmihassali@usm.my Tel:+6046534085

Received: 6 August 2010 Accepted: 12 January 2011 Published: 20 April 2011

Citation: Saleem F, Hassali MA, Shafie AA, Awad AG, Bashir S. Association between Knowledge and Drug Adherence in Patients with Hypertension in Quetta, Pakistan. Trop J Pharm Res 2011; 10(2):125-132 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v10i2.2

© 2011 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the association between patient’s knowledge of hypertension management and medication adherence.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was undertaken with 385 hypertensive patients who visited outpatient departments in two public hospitals in Quetta City, Pakistan. Besides demographic and disease-related questions, two validated questionnaires (Hypertension Fact Questionnaire and Drug Attitude Inventory) were used for data collection. Descriptive statistics were to determine the demographic and disease characteristics of the patients while Spearman rank correlation was employed to measure the association between knowledge and drug adherence.

Results: Out of 385 patients, 236 (61.3 %) of the patients had average knowledge about hypertension while 249 (64.7 %) were categorized as poor adherent. No patient was considered as good adherent in the study. Correlation coefficient between total score of knowledge and total adherence was – 0.170 (p < 0.001), indicating an inverse association between knowledge scores and adherence level.

Conclusion: Although the level of knowledge was average, patients were unsure of the benefits of continuous medication use which resulted in non-adherence to regimens. Educating patients about the benefits of medications and clarifying doubts regarding medication use should result in better control of hypertension.

Keywords: Knowledge, Drug adherence, Hypertension, Correlation