Improvement of patients' knowledge by a single educational meeting on hypertension

Objectives: A poor therapeutic compliance is a major cause of insufficient control of hypertension. As education of patients is fundamental in order t o improve their compliance, we organised two pilot educational meetings aim ed at (1) assessing the support of patients to this kind of meetings, and ( 2) verifying the impact on patient's education. Methods: We invited 225 consecutive patients referred to our Hypertension C linic (some of them regularly followed up and some referred for the first t ime) to participate to an educational meeting on hypertension. Patients wer e divided in two groups, for organising reasons each attending a single mee ting. Each meeting included four sessions: (1) the first session included a multiple choice questionnaire (nine questions, with answers collected by a n interactive electronic system) in order to evaluate the degree of patient 's information about hypertension (definition, prevalence, aetiology, compl ications and treatment), (2) a traditional teaching session, (3) an interac tive phase aimed to assess the improvement of knowledge in which the same q uestions as in the first session have been asked again, and (4) a general d iscussion session. Results: A total of 144 patients (mean age 54 +/- 12 years; 76 M, 68 F) of the 225 invited attended the meeting. The answers to our questions in the i nitial session were correct in a percentage ranging from 60% to 80%. During the third phase immediately after the teaching session, the percentage of correct answers increased significantly (range: 75-98%, P < 0.05 at least i n all questions). Conclusions: This study shows: (1) a satisfactory adherence of patients to this educational initiative; (2) a positive impact of a single educational meeting on patient's knowledge about issues related to hypertension. The po tential role of improving patient's education on clinical outcomes such as blood pressure levels and the rate of blood pressure control requires futur e controlled studies.