A Feasibility Study of the Impact on Blood Pressure Control of Supplementing Community Pharmacist Services With Structured Information on Blood Pressure and Its Treatment

University of Warwick

Status: Completed

Conditions: Hypertension

Treatments: Other: Written and verbal patient education on hypertension and its treatment

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01939860

Warwick.123

Details and patient eligibility

About

Hypertension is a major health problem, however its control is unsatisfactory. One of the reasons for such a high prevalence of this disease includes poor patient compliance to treatment. Approximately 30 % of newly diagnosed hypertensive patients stop taking their blood pressure medication by six months and 50% by 12 months.

The UK government is keen to encourage community pharmacists to play an active role in participation of services that can improve patient adherence to their medications. The New Medicines Service (NMS) and targeted Medicines Use Reviews (MUR) are established services which fund community pharmacists to review and explain medicine use to patients, with hypertension a common condition for which advice is given within these schemes. Within these schemes, advice is verbal and unstructured, with no specific written information provided on drugs or the disease being treated.

This study aims to determine whether structured information provided to participants verbally and in writing by community pharmacists about blood pressure and current medicine(s) within NMS and targeted MURs will be retained and will be associated with improved hypertension control. Participants will be recruited from people eligible for NMS and MURs and attending community pharmacies.

Enrollment: 56 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

1)18 or over 2) male or female 3) Have been started on any blood pressure medication

Exclusion criteria

1)Patients with English language problems

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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56 participants in 2 patient groups

Usual pharmacy care

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants will not receive any structured written education on hypertension and its treatment

usual pharmacy care plus structured information

Experimental group

Description:

Participants will be provided with validated verbal and written information on hypertension and its treatment, including information about class (es) of anti-hypertensive medication(s) used by each patient, and their common side-effects. The written material will be based on validated patient information leaflets from the British Heart Foundation and the Blood Pressure Association.

Treatment:

Other: Written and verbal patient education on hypertension and its treatment