A13630 Development, validation and reliability of medication adherence questionnaire and factors affecting medication adherence in South Indian hypertensive patients

Abstract

Objectives: To develop, validate and test the reliability of medication adherence questionnaire (MAQ) in hypertensive patients. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in both inpatients and outpatients for a period of 8 months. The medication adherence questionnaire (MAQ was prepared by referring to the previously validated questionnaires and other related medication adherence studies. The validation of MAQ was done by experts committee and tested for test-retest reliability. The data was collected from patients who have been receiving at least one antihypertensive medication in the past 3 months by using developed MAQ. Results: The mean medication adherence score for the test, re-test was 66.25 + 19.49 and 67.50 + 19.19 respectively, and the test-retest reliability of MAQ was 0.979. Out of 299 hypertensive patients, 180 (60.20%) were males and 118 (39.46%) were females. In our study population, most the patients were found to have medium medication adherence 161 (53.84%) followed by low medication adherence 117 (39.13%) and high medication adherence 21 (7.02%). Conclusion: The self-reported eight items MAQ was developed and tested for reliability in South Indian hypertensive patients. This MAQ will also able to categorise the patients in to three different types of adherence groups. The mean medication adherence of the study population was 71.77 + 13.94, which indicates low adherence to antihypertensive treatment.