MEDICATION ADHERENCE IN HYPERTENSIVE PATIENTS IN LUMBINI PROVINCE OF NEPAL

Medication Adherence is defined as “the extent to which a person’s behavior in taking medication, lifestyle management, diet, corresponding with an agreed recommendation from a healthcare provider”. Hypertension also called high blood pressure is defined as persistency with an elevation in systolic blood pressure ≥140 mmHg and /or diastolic pressure ≥ 90 mmHg. A cross-sectional study was carried out in order to measure medication adherence, Morisky Green Levine-Medication Adherence Questionnaire developed by Donald Morisky was used to assess medication adherence assessment, which consists of 4 questions (items) whose wording questions are formulated to avoid answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and three levels of medication adherence: high, medium, and low were measured based on the scores 0, 1-2,3-4 respectively. The study carried out an evaluation of medication adherence among hypertensive patients. Among 245 respondents, 5.7% were found to be highly adherent, 37.6% were found to be medium adherent and 56.7% were found to be low adherent. A significant association between a family history of hypertension, diabetes, and smoking behavior was observed. A high proportion of patients had low adherence to their medications, very low proportion of patients were found to have high adherence to their medications. Regular follow up, patient education, and improved social habits of smoking, and alcoholism can be contributing factors to improving medication adherence.