Beliefs and self-management in hypertensive patients

Abstract

The aim of this cross-sectional analytic study was to investigate the information that hypertensive patients had received on factors that causes hypertension, and the patient's beliefs about the causes of his/her disease. Also, the study explores patient's beliefs about corrective actions to be done in the case of episodes of high blood pressure, and the relationship between the informed beliefs and the actions really made for patients in their self-management of the chronic disease. One hundred and seventy-one hypertense patients with pharmacological treatment participate in the study, (20-65 years old). The results indicate an important absence of relation between reports of beliefs and reports of actions of self management, and the presence of some particular risk behaviors in the patient's repertoire that may affect the results of the hypertension treatment. The relevance of these new results for the professional attention of hypertension patients in the primary care context is discussed.