Relationship of treatment satisfaction to medication adherence: findings from a cross-sectional survey among hypertensive patients in Palestine

BACKGROUND: The concepts of medication adherence and Treatment satisfactions are commonly used in clinical research for assessing pharmaceutical care and improving treatment outcomes. Generally, one would expect a positive relationship between the two concepts. The objectives of this study were to investigate the factors associated with adherence to antihypertensive therapy among hypertensive patients and to assess the relationship between antihypertensive medication adherence and treatment satisfaction. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted, adopting the Morisky eight-item Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS) for the assessment of medication adherence and using the Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire for Medication (TSQM 1.4) for the assessment of treatment satisfaction. Descriptive and comparative statistics were used to describe socio-demographic and disease-related characteristics of the patients. All analyses were performed using SPSS v 15.0. RESULTS: Four hundred and ten hypertensive patients were enrolled in the study. The mean age of participants was 58.38 ± 10.65 years; 52% were female and 36.8% had low antihypertensive medication adherence. There was a significant difference in the mean scores in the Effectiveness (p < 0.001), Convenience (p < 0.001), and Global Satisfaction (p < 0.001) domains, but not in the Side Effects (p = 0.466) domain among patients with different levels of adherence. After adjustment for covariates using multiple linear regression, global treatment satisfaction was still statistically significantly (p = 0.001) associated with medication adherence. CONCLUSIONS: Low treatment satisfaction may be an important barrier for achieving high rates of adherence to treatment. These study findings could be helpful in clinical practice, mainly in the early treatment of hypertensive patients, at a point where improving treatment satisfaction is still possible.