The Impact of a Blood Pressure Monitoring Wellness Program on Adults with Hypertension

Hypertension is a national health concern that can increase the risk for cardiovascular disease. Healthy People 2020 recommends improving cardiovascular health by increasing the number of adults who check their blood pressure and understand whether it is high or low. In an effort to improve outcomes in adults with hypertension, this quality improvement project was implemented at a primary care setting aimed at improving blood pressure control through self-care behaviors. The intervention included providing staff education on the HBPM program called IHEALTH, an educational counseling session for recruited participants (adults ages 21- 85 with a diagnosis of HTN within the last year or uncontrolled HTN) in which a pre-test blood pressure knowledge and self-care scale on hypertension were administered. There were statistically significant improvements in BP from pretest to posttest on the average the Mean Arterial Pleasure (MAP) and Systolic BP. The MAP decrease from an average of 105.7 to 100.4 [t(7)=2.32, p=.027, Cohen’s D=1.76] whereas the SBP decrease from an average of 142.9 to 128.4 [t(7)=2.74, p=.015, Cohen’s D=2.07]. There was a small but nonsignificant decrease in DBP from an average of 87.1 to 86.4 [t(7)=0.17, p=.868, Cohen’s D=0.129]. The preintervention knowledge scale rose from a mean score of 69 to a mean score of 88 on the post test. The post intervention pre-intervention self-care score rose from an average of 44 to a post intervention average score of 75. The project showed that the implementation of a quality improvement project in a primary care setting with staff involvement can lead to participant blood pressure control through promotion of participants self-care behaviors. Therefore, implications for practice include incorporating HBPM programs into practice due to the high potential for improving blood pressure control through self-care behaviors. In addition, the implementation of a HBPM program in addition to office blood pressure is important for diagnosis and monitoring HTN (Kairo et. al., 2019).