ASSESSMENT OF KNOWLEDGE OF SELF CARE PRACTICES AMONG HYPERTENSIVE PATIENTS ATTENDING SELECTED HOSPITALS IN ONDO STATE

ABSTRACT Hypertension is a form of heart disease and is defined as the increase in systemic blood pressure (BP) of the systolic blood pressure (SBP) above 140mmHg or diastolic pressure (DBP) greater than 90mmHg based on at least two separate reading on different occasions. However, early detection and management of hypertension is very important and this can be achieved by hypertension self-care practices which is a dynamic and active process required to control blood pressure based on knowledge, attitude, discipline, determination, commitment, self-regulation, empowerment and self-efficacy. Examples of this practices weight reduction, adherence to medication use, eating good diets, etc. In light of this, having good hypertension self-care practices can help reduce primary health care visit by 17% and emergency department by 50%. In view of this, this study was designed to assess the level of knowledge of self-care practices among hypertensive patients attending selected hospitals in Ondo state. To achieve this, a non-experimental research design was adopted and a total of 204 patients in both UNIMEDTH Akure and General hospital Ondo were recruited for the study using the purposive sampling technique. Data was collected using a self-developed questionnaire before and after the intervention, which was eventually analysed with Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS) Version 23 using descriptive statistics. The research discovered that 98% of the respondent had good knowledge on what hypertension means and 2% had poor knowledge on hypertension is about. It was also discovered that 99% of the respondents believe making dietary changes can help manage hypertension 1% of respondents do not believe making dietary changes can help manage hypertension. From this study, however it was revealed that 20.1% of the respondents intentionally skip their medications while 79.9% do not intentionally skip.