Article Sidebar
Published:
Dec 1, 2021DOI:
10.4314/gmj.v55i4.4Keywords:
Article Details
Articles published in the Ghana Medical Journal may not be published elsewhere without the consent of the publishers. Request for consent for reproduction of material published in the Ghana Medical Journal should be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief. The publisher of this Journal reserves the right of copyright of all articles published in the Journal. It should also be understood by all authors that articles approved for publication in the journal are also deemed for publication online by the publisher.
Ghana Medical Journal is an Open Access journal and applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (Creative Commons Attribution License) 4.0 International. See details on the Creative Commons website (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) to articles and other content published in the Journal.
Main Article Content
Prevalence and predictors of clinic appointment non-adherence among adults with poorly controlled hypertension in a primary care setting
Abstract
Objectives: To assess the prevalence and predictors of non-adherence to clinic appointments in adult patients with poorly controlled hypertension.
Design: A descriptive cross-sectional study.
Setting: A primary care setting (family medicine clinic) overseen by family physicians in Kano, Nigeria.
Participants: Two hundred and thirty-four randomly selected patients, aged ≥ 18 years with a diagnosis of hypertension, who had been on treatment for ≥1 year and had a current blood pressure of ≥140/90 mmHg were included.
Main outcome measures: Non-adherence to clinic appointment among participants
Results: Participants’ mean age was 55±12.2 years (range: 23-85 years); they were predominantly females (163, 69.7%). Sixty (25.6%) participants were non-adherent to clinic-appointments. Being employed (OR [Odds ratio] =2.92, 95%CI [confident interval] =1.52-5.65, P=0.002), inability of participants or their children to pay the medical bills (OR=2.92,95%CI=1.42-6.00, P=0.004), and systolic blood pressure (SBP) of <160mmHg (OR=0.43, 95%CI=0.22-0.86, P=0.018) were predictors of clinic appointment non-adherence.
Conclusions: The prevalence of non-adherence to clinic appointments was high. Being employed, patients or their children's inability to pay medical bills, and higher SBP were predictors of non-adherence to clinic appointments. Therefore, more studies are needed on effective interventions to reduce non-adherence to clinic appointments in this setting.
