The Effect of Smart Phone Application Supported Nursing Care Program on the Self-Management of Hypertensive Patients

Hypertension is an important public health problem in our country and in the world. For success in hypertension treatment, timely and accurate diagnosis of patients, effective implementation of lifestyle changes, timely initiation of drug therapy and effective drug compliance are emphasized. The rapid adoption of smartphone technology provides a promising platform for overcoming drug non-compliance by providing medication intake reminders, healthy lifestyle education. It is emphasized that the health belief model can be used in the self-management of the hypertension patient's health and in the regulation of services with smart phone applications. Based on these facts, this study was planned to examine the effect of the smart phone management system supported nursing care program given by the nurse to the primary hypertension patients registered in the Family Health Center on the patient's compliance with the treatment and the blood pressure staying within the target limits. The research was organized in an experimental design with pre-test post-test control group. The population of the research consists of primary hypertensive patients registered in Family Health Centers in Tosya district of Kastamonu province. Sample, effect size 0.25; By taking the alpha value of 0.05 and the power of 0.80, the minimum number of samples was calculated as 82. Considering that there may be data losses, it is planned to include a total of 102 people, 51 in the intervention and control groups, in the sample group. In data collection, the "Patient Information Form", "Blood pressure follow-up form" prepared by the researcher, and the adaptation to Turkish will be collected with the help of the "Drug Adherence/Compliance Self-Efficacy Scale" prepared by Gözüm and Hacıhasanoğlu in 2005. Health belief model-based smartphone-assisted nursing care program application will be installed on the phones of the patients who will be in the intervention group. After the application is started to be used, patients will be notified every two weeks for six months for the disease management process to have nutrition, exercise and doctor control processes. Patients will be able to send a message to the nurse through the application. Messages will be answered regularly on a designated day each week. The data will be collected by face-to-face interview method after necessary explanations and necessary consents are obtained by the researchers. One month after the posttest application (second data), application predicate and usage, the third data (1st follow-up) will be collected in the 3rd month, the fourth data (2nd follow-up) will be collected in the 6th month.