THE ROLE OF PATIENT TRAINING LEVEL AND FAMILY MEDICINE ADMINISTRATION IN THE DIAGNOSIS OF ARTERIAL HYPERTENSION

Background

Hypertension (HT) is a controllable and preventable public health problem that is a risk factor for many serious diseases, especially cardiovascular diseases. Hypertension, which can be silent and lethal, can not be diagnosed in many people. HT constitutes a significant part of the daily practice of the primary care physician. Today, the Family Medicine is a medical discipline constitutes the first level of the health system in Turkey.

Aim

In our study, the effectiveness of family medicine practice in the diagnosis of arterial hypertension was investigated.

Material and Method

We retrospectively reviewed the data of the patients aged 18 years and older who had access to their data in our family medicine department between 2017-2018. A total of seven questions, including personal information (age, gender and education level) and disease identification information (how many years were diagnosed with hypertension, baseline symptom, where and how the diagnosis of hypertension was first established) were retrospectively reviewed from the Family Medicine Information System.

Results

A total of 286 patients, 178 female and 108 male were detected. 9% of the participants were illiterate while 94.1% were literate . 59.8% of the illiterate patients were in primary education, 10.5% in high school and 16.8% in graduate education. 7.7% of the participants were diagnosed in the family medicine polyclinic, and the remaining 92.3% were diagnosed in secondary health care facilities and other places except family medicine. According to education level, 7.7% were diagnosed in family medicine and 92.3% were diagnosed in second-level health facilities and elsewhere except family medicine.

Conclusion

In our study; patients with arterial hypertension were diagnosed more frequently in secondary health care institutions regardless of their education level. Although the rate of diagnosis of arterial hypertension was increased from 1.5% to 16.3% in primary care after starting the practice of family medicine in Konya, we believe that the role of family medicine practice on the diagnosis of arterial hypertension should be increased even more.