Effect of Health Education Intervention on Improving Compliance to Treatment among Hypertensive Patients: Application of Health Belief Model.

Background: The Health Belief Model is trusted that a patient who feels susceptible to hypertension and its complications is more likely to abide to treatment as opposed to the subject who doesn’t belief this idea. Objectives: to determine level of participants’ knowledge about hypertension. Then to assess factors affecting treatment compliance with antihypertensive treatment guided by the use of Health Belief Model variables among hypertensive patients. Finally evaluate the effectiveness of using health education applying HBM on knowledge and compliance to treatment. Methodology:  an intervention study was carried out using two groups. The two groups include: “The health belief model Group”: received educational intervention sessions based on the HBM conceptual framework, “Comparison Group”: received the traditional health education on knowledge about hypertension and compliance to medication and life style regimen. The target group was hypertensive patients in the hypertension clinic at Zagazig University Hospital. All patients attending the clinic over one month were included in the study as a comprehensive sample. Results: Marked improvement in the HBM group in overall compliance (61.3% to 79.6%) in contrast to the ordinary health education group no marked improvement. The percentages of Perceived susceptibility, Perceived severity, Perceived benefits, Perceived barriers, Self-efficacy cues to action show changes between pretest and post test results with a statistical difference in HBM group. For control group comparing pretest and post test results was of no significant difference except for Perceived severity, Perceived benefits, and self-efficacy. Conclusions: the findings support the hypothesis that using health education based on HBM has better results in adherence to treatment than traditional health education.