Patient's Beliefs about Adherence to Medication toward Hypertension: a Qualitative Study

Introduction: As beliefs of patients with hypertension can have significant differences among different people, therefore numerous researchers concluded that beliefs associated with adherence to treatment in different populations should be studied by objective methods, and then beneficial interventions should be developed. Hence, the present survey was carried out to test patient's beliefs about adherence to drug therapy toward hypertension. Methods: A qualitative study was conducted on 18 patients with hypertension using content analysis method. Purposive sampling technique was run and also continued until data saturation. Semi-structured interview was considered as the main method of data collection. To analysis, qualitative content analysis and constant comparative analysis were employed. Results: After exploring and separation of basic concepts, 914 primary codes were extracted from interviews. Classes were created based on codes and similarities, and also after several review and summarization. Inner meanings of classes were identified as primary themes through more reviews and comparison of classes. Given the nature, these conceptual and abstract themes were named that were as follow: 1) attitude toward disease, 2) attitude about drug, and 3) religious beliefs. Conclusion: The current findings revealed that patients' beliefs about adherence to treatment had three dimensions. These results appeared to be useful for health managers and planners to develop and intervene in the important area for facilitating adherence to treatment as the most critical factor in controlling hypertension.