Effectiveness of patient education and psychosocial counseling in promoting compliance and control among hypertensive patients.
Compliance with physician recommendations among long-term hypertensive patients can be a chronic and difficult treatment problem. This study evaluated the relative effectiveness of additional patient education and psychosocial counseling in improving patient compliance. At a family practice clinic, 123 low income, rural, black hypertensive patients were pretested on several psychological characteristics and randomly assigned to one of three groups: vigorous, group patient education and family physician appointments; supportive, individualized psychosocial counseling and family physician appointments; or family physician appointments only, which was the baseline medical care. Intervention and follow-up each lasted three months, and the intervention was in addition to the patients' baseline medical care. Compliance was measured by: keeping follow-up appointments; bringing antihypertension medications to each appointment; consuming these medications; and diastolic blood pressure. Analysis of variance of group mean and change scores, t tests, and chisquare analysis indicated that neither additional patient education nor additional psychosocial counseling improved compliance or blood pressure control significantly better than regular family physician visits alone.
D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American; D000368:Aged; D001794:Blood Pressure; D003376:Counseling; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005260:Female; D005431:Florida; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000523:psychology; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010349:Patient Compliance; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D011897:Random Allocation; D012494:Sampling Studies; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors