Effectiveness of Educational Technology in Promoting Quality of Life and Treatment Adherence in Hypertensive People

The objective of this study was to test the effectiveness of an educational intervention with use of educational technology (flipchart) to promote quality of life (QOL) and treatment adherence in people with hypertension. It was an intervention study of before-and-after type conducted with 116 hypertensive people registered in Primary Health Care Units. The educational interventions were conducted using the flipchart educational technology. Quality of life was assessed through the MINICHAL (lowest score = better QOL) and the QATSH (higher score = better adherence) was used to assess the adherence to hypertension treatment. Both were measured before and after applying the intervention. In the analysis, we used the Student's t-test for paired data. The average baseline quality of life was 11.66 ± 7.55, and 7.71 ± 5.72 two months after the intervention, showing a statistically significant reduction (p <0.001) and mean of differences of 3.95. The average baseline adherence to treatment was 98.03 ± 7.08 and 100.71 ± 6.88 two months after the intervention, which is statistically significant (p < 0.001), and mean of differences of 2.68. The conclusion was that the educational intervention using the flipchart improved the total score of quality of life in the scores of physical and mental domains, and increased adherence to hypertension treatment in people with the disease.