Reasons why Hypertensive Patients Admission to Emergency Services and their Chronic Illness Care Management

Abstract

The study sample was composed of 200 individuals with hypertension who were admitted to the emergency department of a government hospital. Of the participants, 36.5% presented to the emergency department. Of the participants, those who were older, who had a low education level, who consumed salt without restriction, coffee drinkers, who were not on a diet and who did not receive health education obtained lower scores from the Patient Assessment of Chronic Illness Care scale. Effective discharge planning from hospital to home, home visits and counselling provided by primary health care departments will contribute to a reduction in emergency admissions and to successful chronic disease management.of chronic illnesses is to prevent the development of symptoms and complications, and in case complications develop, to manage them effectively, to preserve the health of individuals and to increase their quality of life [9][10][11]. Effective chronic disease management will reduce the frequency of admissions to emergency services or hospitals, limit the physiological and psychological effects of the disease, prevent dependence on others while performing activities of daily life and improve patients' quality of life [7,9,12]. In this process, priority must be given to the methods of nurses working at primary, secondary and tertiary protection levels to control the blood pressure of hypertensive patients, and to topics such as the necessity of taking medication regularly and timely compliance with medication, hypertensionrelated complications, and the positive effects of taking medicine regularly to control blood pressure [6,13,14]. In health education, the importance of the risk factors affecting the control of blood pressure can be taught, and individuals' awareness can be increased.In the management of hypertension, nurses play an important role by helping hypertensive individuals to adopt healthy lifestyle behaviors and by providing them counselling services to better comply with medication and to keep their blood pressure under control. Thus, such attempts can take complications likely to develop, emergency and unplanned hospital admissions and indirect cost increases under control. Several international and national studies demonstrated that education and home visits aiming to promote hypertensive individuals' compliance with medication and healthy lifestyle behaviors increased their compliance with the treatment and led to significant reduction in their blood pressure and body mass index. Thus, the International Council of Nurses emphasized the importance of chronic disease in the world and management of chronic diseases in its 2010 theme [6].The aim of this descriptive study was to determine the reasons why individuals with a diagnosis of hypertension were admitted to the