Blood pressure measurement knowledge and counselling among hospital pharmacists - an interventional study

Abstract Background Pharmacists occupy a vantage position to educate patients with hypertension on self-monitoring of blood pressure (BP). An update on their knowledge and counselling on BP measurement is needful to ascertain proper information dissemination to patients. Methods An interventional study was carried out for a six-month period among consecutively sampled pharmacists working at a tertiary healthcare facility, using a semi-structured questionnaire for data collection. Sequel to preintervention assessment of pharmacists’ knowledge and counselling on BP measurement, an educational intervention comprising didactic lecture, case studies, demonstrations, and interactive question and answer sessions was carried out to address the gaps observed. Knowledge and counselling were then reassessed one-month postintervention to find out the impact of the intervention. Data was summarized with descriptive and inferential statistics with significance level set at p < 0.05. Results One hundred and forty-four pharmacists completed the study. Preintervention knowledge and counselling on BP measurement among the pharmacists was poor. Median scores of pharmacists’ knowledge on BP measurement increased significantly from 13.00 preintervention to 25.00 postintervention (p < 0.001); while their counselling on BP measurement also increased significantly from 1.00 preintervention to 12.00 postintervention (p < 0.001). The knowledge category of the pharmacists’ improved as majority who were categorized as having either “poor” (67, 46.5%) or “fair” (68, 47.2%) knowledge preintervention advanced to “excellent” (99, 68.7%) knowledge postintervention. Similarly, the pharmacists’ counselling category was upgraded from the majority categorized as poor (141, 97.9%) preintervention to excellent (87, 60.4%) postintervention. Prior to the educational intervention, only 62 (43.1%) pharmacists knew that BP measurement had to be carried out in both arms for a first-time patient. Also, when asked the question “What BP reading will be recorded for a patient whose BP readings when taken thrice were 149/82 mmHg, 141/78 mmHg, and 139/78 mmHg?” only 38 (26.4%) provided the right answer. Similarly, majority of the pharmacists (51, 35.4%) could only state one out of five precautions during blood pressure measurement. In this study, pharmacists’ gender, additional educational qualification, and work experience did not significantly influence their knowledge and counselling on BP measurement. Conclusions The educational intervention significantly improved pharmacists’ knowledge and counselling on BP measurement.