A cross-sectional survey of self-rated health and its patients with hypertension

Aim: The purpose of the study is to investigate the levels of self-rated health, blood pressure control, understand their relationships between the self-rated health and blood pressure control, and to identify the extent to which demographic, disease and psychosocial factors predict the self-rated health of hypertensive patients. Methods: The study adopted a cross-sectional design. Nine hundred forty-two subjects with essential hypertension were invited to join the study, 807 completed the survey. Self-report questionnaires were used to collect data. The hierarchical logistic regression was used to test the determinants of self-rated health status. Results: Of all the subjects, 593% rated their health status as good, and 41.7% perceived their health status as poor. In terms of levels of blood pressure control, nurse-measured blood pressure showed that 40.2% of the subjects had good control levels, 59.8% for poor control levels. There were positive relationships between good self-rated health and controlled blood pressure of hypertensive patients (p < 0.05). The logistic regression model showed that the determinants of subjects' self-rated health included income (OR = 4.28; 95% CI = 1.86-6.25), duration of hypertension diagnosis (OR = 4.06; 95% Cl = 2.17-6.35), treatment adherence (OR = 9.02; 95% Cl = 536-15.51), physical activity (OR = 13.81; 95% Cl = 10.16-19.57) and social support (OR = 8.63; 95% CI = 7.17-11.35). Conclusions: The self-rated health status and blood pressure control for patients with hypertension is suboptimal, effective strategies should be developed to improve patients' general health. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.