Self-care Practice and Associated Factors Among Hypertensive Follow Up Patients at East Gojam Zone Public Hospitals, North West Ethiopia, 2021

Abstract

Background: Self-care practice is crucial for the prevention and management of Hypertension. Poorly controlled hypertension leads to cardiovascular complication as well as organ damage. Despite the availability of several effective pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic therapies, hypertension control remains suboptimal. Self-care practices allow hypertensive patients to have improved quality of life by avoiding complication and decrease health care expenditure. Objective: we assessed self-care practice and its associated factors among Hypertensive Follow up patients at East Gojjam Zone public hospitals, Northwest Ethiopia, 2020.Methods: Institution based cross sectional study was conducted by both quantitative and qualitative methods from October 1-30, 2020. Epi data version 3.1 and SPSS version 25.0 were used for data entry and for analysis respectively. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression analysis was employed. Adjusted odds ratios were used to ascertain effect sizes for any association between the dependent and associated variables while significance level at p value of 0.05 was determined using 95% confidence intervals. Result: Out of 480 patients included in the study 51% have Poor self-care practices. About 44.6%, 92.5%, 82.8%, 62.5% of respondents were poor adherent to antihypertensive medications, low diet quality, poor practiced to physical activity, poor practice to weight management respectively. Some of the respondents 3.3%, 9.8% were smokers and were alcohol drinkers respectively. Educational status who cannot read and write (AOR=3.153, 95% CI: 1.674-5.939), no co morbidity (AOR = 0.418, 95% CI: 0.263-0.663), uncontrolled blood pressure status (AOR = 2.141, 95% CI: 1.271- 3.609), poor social support status (AOR = 2.587, 95% CI: 1.544-4.334) and unfavorable attitude (AOR= 3.193, 95% CI: 1.951-5.225) showed significant statistical association with poor self-care practice.Conclusion: The level of hypertension self-care practices found to be low. Therefore, education towards hypertension self-care practices should be strengthened for patients living with hypertension. Special attention should be given to patients with low educational level that cannot read and write, patients with co morbidity, uncontrolled state of hypertension, poor social support and those with unfavorable attitude towards hypertension management modalities.