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2 Minute EBP Challenge

Monday, January 30, 2012
Scrub the Hub
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends that central venous catheter (CVC) hubs be scrubbed for how long?

Monday, January 23, 2012
Severe Sepsis and AF Risk
Up to 20% of patients with severe sepsis develop a new onset atrial fibrillation.  Which factor was not associated with increased risk?

Monday, January 16, 2012
Unreported Hospital Errors
In a recent study the Department of Health and Human Service reports that what percentage of hospital errors go unreported?

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  • Get tips, timesavers, and more from
    David W. Woodruff, MSN, RN-BC, CNS, CMSRN, CEN

    Home > 2 Minute EBP Challenge > Compliance with Antihypertensives

    Compliance with Antihypertensives

    Monday, November 23, 2009

    Stay up-to-date the easy way!

    How would you answer this question?

    Nurses are aware of the importance of patient adherence with antihypertensive medication therapy.  What many nurses often don't know is that adherence is decreased in which patient population?

    a. Obese patients
    b. Diabetic patients
    c. The patient on multiple drugs
    d. Patients with cancer

    The correct answer is "c," patients with cancer.

    In an interesting study by Mazzaglia and associates, the authors found that patients with cancer were more likely to be noncompliant with antihypertensive medication therapy.  Interestingly, obese patients, diabetic patients, and patients taking multiple medications were more complaint with antihypertensive therapy than were other patients.  But overall drug therapy discontinuation was about 5%-10% per year, and may even be as high as 50% after six months.

    The high discontinuation rate may be due to the financial cost of the medications or the perceived lack of benefit in a patient who may subjectively feel healthy.  The low adherence in cancer patients may be due to a variety of reasons, but this is a patient population who should be carefully assessed for adherence to prescribed antihypertensive therapy.

    Those patients with high adherence to antihypertensive drug therapy had significant reductions in cardiovascular mortality and morbidity.  Therefore it is important to assess why some patients are not compliant and plan appropriate interventions to help them acquire their medications and take them appropriately.

    From: Mazzaglia, G. et al. (2009).  Adherence to antihypertensive medications and cardiovascular morbidity among newly diagnosed hypertensive patients.  Circulation, 120:1598.

    Congratulations to Cheryl Trice who won an autographed copy of my 101 Tips to Improve Your Nursing Care book for answering this week's question correctly.  Congratulations Cheryl!    

    Best wishes,
    David W. Woodruff, MSN, RN-BC, CNS, CEN
    President,     Ed4Nurses, Inc.

    Take 10% off any program at Ed4Nurses.com using the 2-Minute EBP code (SaveEBP).

    (c) 2009 Ed4Nurses, Inc.  Feel free to print this e-mail and share it with your colleagues. Other forms of digital or print reproduction are prohibited without prior written consent from Ed4Nurses, Inc.
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