Key result
Primary care practitioners rely on their own judgment to manage home blood pressure self-monitoring, addressing device purchase, patient anxiety, data valuation, and socioeconomic barriers in the absence of detailed formal guidance.
Why the study?
NICE care pathways for hypertension recommend specific guidelines but lack detail on supporting patients to self-monitor blood pressure.
Primary care practitioners rely on their own judgment to manage home blood pressure monitoring due to a lack of detailed guidance on patient support.
Practitioners rely on individual judgement for home BP self-monitoring support amid sparse guidance; leaves open optimal standardization in primary care.
BACKGROUND: Home self-monitoring of blood pressure is widely used in primary care to assist in the diagnosis of hypertension, as well as to improve clinical outcomes and support adherence to medication. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) care pathways for hypertension recommend specific guidelines, although they lack detail on supporting patients to self-monitor. AIM: To elicit primary care practitioners' experiences of managing patients' home blood pressure self-monitoring, across surgeries located in different socioeconomic areas. DESIGN & SETTING: A qualitative focus group study was conducted with a total of 21 primary care professionals. METHOD: Participants were GPs and practice nurses (PNs), purposively recruited from surgeries in areas of low and high deprivation, according to the English indices of multiple deprivation. Six vignettes were developed featuring data from interviews with people who self-monitor and these were used in five focus groups. Results were thematically analysed. RESULTS: Themes derived in the thematic analysis largely reflected topics covered by the vignettes. These included: advice on purchase of a device; supporting home monitoring; mitigating patient anxiety experienced as a result of home monitoring; valuing patients' data; and effect of socioeconomic factors. CONCLUSION: The work provides an account of methods used by primary care practitioners in the management of home blood pressure self-monitoring, where guidance may be lacking and primary care practitioners act on their own judgement. Findings complement recent policy documentation, which recognises the need to adopt new ways of working to empower patients (for example, additional support from healthcare assistants), but lacks detail on how this should be done.
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Andrews et al. (2020) studied Hypertension (n=21). Home blood pressure self-monitoring management was evaluated on Practitioner views and experiences (qualitative themes). Primary care practitioners rely on their own judgment to manage home blood pressure self-monitoring, addressing device purchase, patient anxiety, data valuation, and socioeconomic barriers in the absence of detailed formal guidance.
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