Assessing the Role of Knowledge, Awareness, Practice in Achieving Medication Adherence among Hypertensive Patients

Medication adherence is that the degree to which the person's behaviour corresponds with the agreed recommendations from a health care provider. Knowledge and the awareness concerning the hypertension and the antihypertensive medications have an important role within the medication adherence; lack of this can have negative impact on the medication adherence. The assessment of medication adherence in the study was meted out by using Morisky Scale. It’s a cross sectional study conducted in 150 individuals in Kankanady, Valachil, Valencia, Jeppu, Padil of Mangalore in Karnataka. Patient data collection forms were used to collect the information. Present study reflected that patients had knowledge regarding normal BP, symptoms and complications; however majority thinks hypertension can be curable. A positive attitude and practice were observed among the patients apart from practice of normal exercise. Analysing the data using MAMS-8 scale, study showed only 11.3% of the population were found to be high adherent that shows the decrease in the adherence rates. 34% had moderate adherence and the remaining 54% were low adherent. Assessment of data suggests that majority lack complete information about hypertension and its management. The study results revealed that hypertension related knowledge, awareness and practice plays a serious role in improving medication adherence.