Drug compliance among hypertensive patients in a teaching hospital

OBJECTIVE: To determine the compliance rate and associated factors among hypertensive patients in a teaching hospital. STUDY DESIGN: A cross-sectional study. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Ethical approval taken from the Institutional Ethics Committee (No. 00101/9/2013). One hundred adult hypertensive patients were interviewed using a pretested, structured, closed ended questionnaire. Inclusion criteria include all adult hypertensive patients attending outpatient clinic from 1(st) to 28(th) November 2013 at King Saud Medical City. Exclusion criteria include only if the patient refuse to participate in the study. RESULTS: After calculating the compliance of each patient, we found that 63 of the patients had >80% compliance rate. The most common causes of noncompliance were felt good (reported by 59 patients out of 100), simply forgot (56%), had problems taking pills at specified time (55%), and felt asleep through dose time (52%). CONCLUSION: The compliance rate with medications was good, but there was a proportion of patients were noncompliant because maybe they need better education and family support.