The Hill-Bone Compliance to High Blood Pressure Therapy Scale assesses patient behaviors for three important behavioral domains of high blood pressure treatment: 1) reduced sodium intake; 2) appointment keeping; and 3) medication taking. This scale is comprised of 14 items in three subscales. Each item is a four point Likert type scale. The content validity of the scale was assessed by a relevant literature review and an expert panel, which focused on cultural sensitivity and appropriateness of the instrument for low literacy. Internal consistency reliability and predictive validity of the scale were evaluated using two community based samples of hypertensive adults enrolled in clinical trials of high blood pressure care and control. The standardized alpha for the total scale were 0.74 and 0.84, and the average interitem correlations of the 14 items were 0.18 and 0.28, respectively. The construct and predictive validity of the scale was assessed by factor analysis and by testing of theoretically derived hypotheses regarding whether the scale demonstrated consistent and expected relationships with related variables. In this study, high compliance scale scores predicted significantly lower levels of blood pressure and blood pressure control. Moreover, high compliance scale scores at the baseline were significantly associated with blood pressure control at both baseline and at follow up in the two independent samples. This brief instrument provides a simple method for clinicians in various settings to use to assess patients' self reported compliance levels and to plan appropriate interventions.
In this population-based study of older adults, although all measures of blood pressure were strongly and directly related to the risk of coronary and cerebrovascular events, SBP was the best single predictor of cardiovascular events.
OBJECTIVES:To identify attitudes that influence patient help-seeking behavior and aspects of treatment that influence patient preferences for management of depression.
DESIGN:Three focus group discussions (two patient groups stratified by race and one professional group). Questions addressed experience with depression, help-seeking behaviors, treatment preferences, and perceived barriers to mental health care.
SETTING: Academic medical center.
PATIENTS/PARTICIPANTS:Eight black patients and eight white patients with depression; seven health care professionals (four physicians and three social workers).
MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS:Discussions were audiotaped, transcribed, and reviewed independently by two investigators to identify and group distinct comments into categories with specific themes. Differences were adjudicated by a third investigator. Comments within categories were then checked for relevance and consistency by a health services researcher and a psychiatrist. More than 90% of the 806 comments could be grouped into one of 16 categories. Black patients raised more concerns than white patients regarding spirituality and stigma. Patients made more comments than professionals regarding the impact of spirituality, social support systems, coping strategies, life experiences, patientprovider relationships, and attributes of specific treatments. They discussed the role these factors played in their helpseeking behavior and adherence to treatment. epression is one of the most common major mental disorders, affecting approximately 5% of the general population, mostly young adults and women, in any one year. 1 Depressive disorders have a substantial effect on the individual, the family, and society and are associated with more functional disability than most chronic medical illnesses. 2,3 Individuals with depression utilize health care services in the general medical and mental health sector three times as often as nondepressed controls, even after controlling for medical comorbidity. 4 The majority of individuals with depression in the United States who seek care receive all or part of their
CONCLUSIONS:
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.