@2024 Afarand., IRAN

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ISSN: 2383-2150    Journal of Education and Community Health 2014;1(3):63-69

Background
…[1-2]. Hypertension is one of the most important dangerous factors in causing Atherosclerosis, heart failure, stroke and kidney failure in many countries [3].
Previous Studies
Most of the hypertension patients do not know about their illness and those who find out about it, only one third of them bring their disease under control. Diet, smoking, and following drug regimen and so on are the effective factors on hypertension [4].… [5-11]. Social support as an environmental factor can affect the patients[12]. … [13-18].
Aim(s)
The aim of this study was the investigation of social support and its relationship with adherence to the treatment.
Research type
The current study is a cross-sectional (descriptive- analytical) one.
Research society, place and time
This research was done during 4 months on 130 patients subjected to hypertension who had referred to Heart Clinic of Taleghani hospital carrying their outpatient records.
Sampling method and number
This study has been done through census method. Inclusion criteria were the treatment of the subjects with hypertension drugs for at least 6 months and consumption of at least one drug by them for controlling hypertension.
Used devices&materials
Used instrument in gathering data included demographic variables (age, educational level, marital status, insurance, number of children, housing, years of having the disease and employment status), Waux Social Support Questionnaire[19] and Hill-Bone regimen[20]. Hill- Bone questionnaire included 9 questions about regimen such as “how often do you forget to take anti hypertension drugs?”; 2 questions were about how making appointment with the doctor such as “when I have an appointment with the doctor, I postpone to do other things”, and 3 questions about adherence to the regimen such as “how often do you add salt to your food before eating?”. Its scaling was based on four-option Likert scaleas ( 1= Never ( the least score) to 4= Always ( the highest score).The content validity was conducted with the help of 12 faculty members of Shahid Beheshti Nursing and Midwifery college who had sufficient expertise and experience about the subject matter. Questionnaire reliability was also conducted by calculation of coefficient on 20 hypertension patients and verified by 0.8 alpha. Waux social support questionnaire was made in 1986 which included 23 questions in 3 sub-components: family support included 8 questions (my family watch over me a lot), friend's support included 7 questions (my friends respect me), and other people support included 7 questions (other people value me). Hematirad and Sepah Mansour(2008) used this questionnaire [21]. Scaling system of questionnaire was done according to zero= yes and one= no. It is worth mentioning that the resulting score of the questionnaire of following the regimen and social support were mentioned with percent and subjects were ranked in three groups to specify the regiment and social support condition. As a result, subjects with score under 50% were ranked in weak group, between 50-75 in medium and up to 75 in good group. Statistical analysis: For statistical analysis, SPSS 16 software was used and through using statistical tests of Spearman and one-way ANOVA, the gathered data was analyzed. A significant level was considered less than 0.05 for all the tests.
Findings by Text
The investigation of the subjects showed that 50% of participants were women. The mean age of participants was85±9.8 years and most of the subjects were in the age range from 51 to 56. The mean period that subjects had the disease was 9.2 ± 5.9 years and the education of most of them was in primary school level. In terms of marriage, most of them were married (64.6%). In studying the social support, the results showed that 40.8% of subjects had weak social support.50.8 had medium and 8.4 had good social support. In studying the rate of adherence to regimen, it was specified that 85.4% had medium adherence, 5.4% had good and 9.2% had weak adherence (Table 1). According to the aim of the study, Spearman correlation coefficient showed a significant relationship between social support factors and rate of adherence to the regimen (Table 2). Accordingly, patients with medium and good social support had sufficient regimen. In addition, it was specified that patients with weak adherence had weak social support. The study of the relationship between demographic variables and social support showed that there is a meaningful relationship between marital status, educational level, employment position and social support (p<0.05). Studying the demographic variables with adherence to the regimen showed that there is a meaningful relationship between age and educational level and adherence to regimen (p<0.05). There was no meaningful relationship between adherence to the regimen and marital status and employment status (Table 3).
Main comparison to the similar studies
In Criswell et al. study [22] showed that subjects who have a good social support use their hypertension drugs well. … [23-24].With respect to the social support, it was showed that 40% of subjects have weak social support that is matched with the study results of Salehi and Mahmodifar[25] and Karimi et al.… [26-29].
Suggestions
Considering social support in nursing caring can result in health improvement in patients with hypertension.
Limitations
Among the limitations of current study, it can be referred to the high age of subjects and filling the questionnaire in hospital environment that can cause losing concentration, patience and sufficient attention of patients.
Conclusions
The following of regimen by patients is not appropriate and social support has a clear relationship with the rate of following the regimen.
Acknowledgments
We are so grateful for the helping and supporting of respectful Research Vice Chancellor of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and all other people who helped us in conducting this study.
Conflict of interest
Non-declared
Ethical Permissions
Current study has permission of ethical committee of ShahidBeheshi University of Medical Sciences, and ethical consideration with explaining the aims of the study to patients, attending the study voluntarily and asking conscious permission have been observed.
Funding Sources
The current study is part of the MA thesis of nursingtraining major.

TABLES and CHARTS

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