Assessing Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Primary Health Care Physicians Towards Screening Patients for Hypertension in Cairo.

Abstract

Introduction : Hypertension (HTN) is a common serious health problem associated with high morbidity and mortality rates .At the same time ,HTN is widely prevalent all over the world including Egypt. For many people, the primary care physician is their first point of contact with the health care system, as well as their main source of preventive and essential care. Objective: Assessing knowledge, attitude and practices of primary health care physicians towards screening patients for hypertension in Cairo. Methodology:A cross-sectional study , conducted in the primary health care centres (PHCC) in Nasr city, which was chosen randomly to represent Cairo city , where all doctors working in these centres were asked to complete a self administered structured and open ended questionnaire contained the relevant variables : Results: About 90% of the studied physicians were convinced with the importance of routine measuring blood pressure for risky patients and 79% stated that role of the PHC physician should be the early detection of HTN. As regards knowledge towards HTN items, only 23.5% knew the prevalence and 18.5% knew the most recent definition and grading. The practices of the doctors towards screening patients for HTN ,showed that only 63.9% of the doctors usually perform accurate and enough procedures to diagnose HTN patients and 46.2% routinely screen patients around forty years old while only 43.7% were regularly checking up the accuracy of the used sphygmomanometers . Conclusion: The participating physicians had poor knowledge towards some important items especially the prevalence and new classification of HTN. Their practices were not optimal as regards the accurate diagnosis of HTN and routine checkup and measuring blood pressure for people attending the PHC clinics. Recommendations to manage these defects were suggested.