Iran Journal of Nursing

A quasi - experimental study was made to determine how teaching dietary and therapeutic regimen to hypertensive patients may affect their practices of the issues mentioned.

A total of 80 patients were selected sequentially from clients attending the outpatient clinics in hospitals affiliated with the Ministry of Health Services and Medical Sciences (Tehran, 1995).

The tool was questionnaire posing 7 questions regarding personal characteristics of the subjects

(i.e, age, sex, marital status, etc.) and 26 items regarding client's practices related to food and drug regimen.

The findings were presented in 48 tables reflecting frequency distribution and percentages further central tendency values (mean and standard deviation) and inferal statistical lists were employed for further analysis (12, Mc nemar and Pierson's correlation coefficient).

The results showed that the majority of the subjects were married women who had not completed highschool, most of them of 50-69 years age group and had been hypertensive for one to four years. More than half of them (50) had another member of their family with high blood pressure.

In analysing the results, it was found that prior to instruction the mean score was 8 and the standard deviation 3.34, where 17.5% 01 the subjects had obtained 8 scores. These values changed when the test was repeated after a certain time to mean of 13.23 and standard deviation 2.23 and 27% gained 13 scores on clients'dietary practice. Regarding therapeutic regimen also befor the instruction took place 27.5% gained 4 scores with a mean of 3.27 and standard deviation of 1.49, where post - instruction examination showed that 55% gained a score as high as 5 or 6, the mean was 5.63 and the standard deviation 1.48.

Mc.Nemar and 12 statistical tests were employed for determining the significance of patient teaching affecting clients' practice of dietary and therapeutic regimen. The findings supported the hypothesis, thus instruction affected client's practice.

To correlate personal characteristics of the subjects like sex, age marital status, level of education and duration of illness with the difference of scores gained pre-and post-instruction. The statistical tests revealed no significant correlation.