Text Messaging as a Simple Strategy to Improve Medication Adherence in Hypertensive Patients: A Step in Decreasing Stroke
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Abstract
Hypertension remains a prevalent public health concern mainly because adherence to antihypertensive medications is suboptimal. Traditional interventions to improve adherence are complex and not widely effective. The focus of this study is to explore the effect of text messaging as a simple strategy to reduce nonadherence in hypertensive patients as a step in decreasing incidence of stroke. Text messaging is chosen only to address a barrier at the patient level such as the lack of recall or forgetting. Therefore the question is: What is the relationship between text messaging and the reduction of medication nonadherence among hypertensive patients? A critical review of the literature was done. Literature search was conducted on CINAHL, Medline, PubMed, and Google Scholar, as well as reference lists of the articles identified. Eligible studies had to contain text messaging with the outcome of improved medication adherence in adults 18 years or older with hypertension. The Health Belief Model with illustration was chosen for theoretical framework of the paper. Ten studies were selected (5 RCTs, 3 meta-analyses, 2 systematic reviews). Only 3 studies focused specifically on hypertension, as there were limited studies done on adherence in hypertensive patients. All 10 studies concluded that text message reminders improve medication adherence among patients with chronic disease, although some results are not statistically significant. In conclusion, text messaging can improve medication adherence to antihypertensive medications. While the results are promising, more research is needed given the short duration of the studies and reliance on self-reported measure such as Morisky medication adherence scale for medication adherence.
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Capstone Project
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Hawaii Pacific University