Changes in primary healthcare providers’ attitudes and counseling behaviors related to dietary sodium reduction, DocStyles 2010 and 2015

High blood pressure is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The 2013 ACC/AHA Lifestyle Management Guideline recommends counseling pre-hypertensive and hypertensive patients to reduce sodium intake. Population sodium reduction efforts have been introduced in recent years, and dietary guidelines continued to emphasize sodium reduction in 2010 and 2015. The objective of this analysis was to determine changes in primary health care providers’ sodium-reduction attitudes and counseling between 2010 and 2015. Primary care internists, family/general practitioners, and nurse practitioners answered questions about sodium-related attitudes and counseling behaviors in DocStyles, a repeated cross-sectional web-based survey in the United States. Differences in responses between years were examined. In 2015, the majority (78%) of participants (n = 1,251) agreed that most of their patients should reduce sodium intake, and reported advising hypertensive (85%), and chronic kidney disease patients (71%), but not diabetic patients (48%) and African-American patients (43%) to consume less salt. Since 2010, the proportion of participants agreeing their patients should reduce sodium intake decreased while the proportion advising patients with these characteristics to consume less salt increased and the prevalence of specific types of advice declined. Changes in behaviors between surveys remained significant after adjusting for provider and practice characteristics. More providers are advising patients to consume less salt in 2015 compared to 2010; however, fewer agree their patients should reduce intake and counseling is not universally applied across patient groups at risk for hypertension. Further efforts and educational resources may be required to enable patient counseling about sodium reduction strategies.