Knowledge, attitudes, and practices of healthy lifestyle modifications among people with hypertension in a tertiary hospital of the Northern Region, Ghana

Globally, about 1.4 billion adults are diagnosed with hypertension, and two–thirds of those diagnosed live in low- and middle-income countries. Hypertension is often referred to as the “silent killer” because most patients do not know they have the illness and are at risk of developing complications. Lifestyle modification is essential in the control and management of hypertension to prevent the development of complications. The purpose of the study was to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of hypertensive patients towards lifestyle modifications. The study employed a descriptive cross-sectional design in which 208 hypertensive patients were purposively selected to complete a questionnaire. The data were analyzed using SPSS version 24, where descriptive and inferential statistics were applied. Knowledge, attitude, and practices of hypertensive patients were measured. Chi-square tests were used to establish whether there was an association between socio-demographic characteristics and knowledge, attitudes, or practices. To identify predictors of knowledge, attitude, and practices among hypertensive patients, logistic regression was conducted. All data analyses were performed at a significance level of p < 0.05. The majority (58.20%) of respondents had good knowledge of healthy lifestyle modification. The results also show that the majority (57.7%) of the respondents had a negative attitude, and a majority (56.7%) had poor healthy lifestyle practices. The bivariate analysis of sociodemographic characteristics and knowledge of healthy lifestyle modification revealed that age, educational status, and occupational status were statistically significantly associated with knowledge (p < 0.05). The bivariate analysis also indicated a statistically significant association between gender, marital status, occupational status, and duration of antihypertensive medication use with attitudes (p < 0.05). Also, the multivariate analysis of the predictors of knowledge of healthy lifestyle modifications indicated that all the variables remained statistically significant with knowledge of healthy lifestyle modification at p < 0.05. For attitudes towards healthy lifestyle modifications, the multivariate analysis showed that only occupational status remained statistically significant at p < 0.05. The results show that though the participants had good knowledge, this did not translate into good attitudes and practices towards healthy lifestyle modifications. Lifestyle modifications to manage hypertension should include more efforts involving behavioral counseling and multidisciplinary care.