Self-Care Activities among Adult Hypertensive Patients in a Primary Care setting in Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Self-care activities remain imperative to ensure optimal control of blood pressure and complication prevention among patients with chronic diseases such as hypertension. Sustained lifestyle modifications coupled with the essential domains of hypertension self-care will help in this regard. This includes medication adherence and various lifestyle factors such as low-salt and low-fat diets, exercise, restricting alcohol consumption, smoking cessation, weight management, self-monitoring of blood pressure (BP), regular doctors' visits and stress reduction. This paper assessed self-care activities among adult hypertensive patients attending the Family Medicine Clinic of the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, Ilorin, Kwara-State Nigeria.
Method: This was a hospital-based cross-sectional study. Three hundred and forty-one respondents were selected using a systematic random sampling technique. Data were collected using the hypertension self-care activity level effect questionnaire. Data analysis was done using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 21. Frequency, percentages and charts were used to present the categorical variables. Chi-square tests were performed to determine the association between self-care and sociodemographic characteristics as well as self-care and duration of hypertension. A p-value of less than 0.05 was taken as statistically significant. 
Results: The age of the participants ranged from 30 to 89 years. The majority of the respondents had good self-care (81.5%). The good self-care activities practised were physical exercise (85.6%), low fat intake (60.9%) and visits to a Dietician/Nutritionist (55.4%). The topmost poor self-care activities practised were missing clinic visits (30.8%). Sociodemographic factors such as educational status (χ²= 13.985, p= 0.030), marital status (χ²= 17.177, p= 0.009), occupational status (χ²= 20.154, p= 0.003) and average monthly income (χ²= 8.956, p= 0.011) were significantly associated with self-care activities. However, there was no statistically significant association between the duration of hypertension and self-care.
Conclusions: Good self-care activities were practised by the majority in this study. Patterns of good self-care activities practised were physical exercise, low fat intake and visits to dieticians. Good adherence to self-care behaviours as seen in this study is to be encouraged as this will help in ameliorating hypertension complications.