Antihypertensive treatment adherence in workers of a General Hospital

ABSTRACT Objective: to assess antihypertensive treatment adherence and associated factors in workers from a hospital. Method: cross-sectional research, consisting of 108 workers who self-reported as being hypertensive. Associations between sociodemographic, work and health variables were assessed regarding adherence. Results: the mean age was 44.2 years, with predominance of the female sex and workers from the nursing area. Through blood pressure measurement, 25% of participants were classified as non-controlled hypertensive patients. Approximately 88% reported taking some sort of medication; however, 79.6% did not adhere to the antihypertensive treatment. In the multiple regression analysis, the independent factors for non-adherence were hypercholesterolemia (OR=8.10; p=0.024) and missing medical appointments (OR=4.06; p=0.048). Conclusion: we verified a significant percentage of non-adherence. Since hypertension and cholesterol are asymptomatic diseases that require continuous treatment, hypertensive patients have difficulties to understand the importance of adhering to the treatment, even being health professionals or working in hospitals.