Self-instructional module influences attitude and practices for stroke prevention in hypertensive patients

Abstract

Stroke is one of the prime medical reasons for high global mortality and morbidity rates for which the major predisposing factor is hypertension. We assumed that the hypertensive subjects may develop complications leading to stroke; the use of Self Instructional Module was expected to help hypertensive patients to gain adequate knowledge that in turn will instill attitude favoring stroke prevention thereby will encourage stroke prevention practices. Therefore, in this study the impact of the developed Self Instructional Module on: a) the attitude of hypertensive patients to stroke prevention; and b) the practice of hypertensive patients to stroke prevention for the selected demographic variables was evaluated using questionnaire technique. We adopted a conceptual framework to develop the Self Instructional Module on prevention of stroke and evaluated the improvement in performance on pre- and post-assessments for attitude and practice amongst hypertensive patients to stroke and stroke prevention based on the scores obtained by the individual participants. The resultant data was analyzed by Wilcox-Signed Rank test and Kruskal-Wallis test that revealed post-test had significant improvement in scores for attitude and practice for stroke prevention among hypertensive patients in comparison to pre-test. Hence, this research concluded that the use of Self Instructional Module is effective in improving the attitude and practice for stroke prevention in hypertensive subjects.