Family and internal medicine resident's awareness of and adherence to the Joint National Committee 8 (JNC 8) hypertension guidelines: A cross-sectional study

Background: Various hypertension management guidelines have been published, disseminated and regularly updated to improve hypertension control. Poor adherence to clinical practice guidelines has been a growing concern and shown to be a contributor to poor quality of care and health outcomes. Objective: This study aims to assess the awareness and adherence of family and internal medicine residents to the recommendations of JNC 8 guidelines and to identify associated residents' characteristics. Study design: This study used a cross sectional design. The study participants were all trained male and female family and internal medicine residents working at King Saud University Medical City in Riyadh. They were recruited between February 2016 and April 2016 by using a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaires were distributed to the residents by convenience sampling technique. Result: A total of 109 residents completed a self-administered questionnaire (response rate 90.8%). One-hundred seven residents (98%) were aware of the JNC 8 guidelines for the management of hypertension. The overall adherence of residents to all recommendations was (88.1%). Though not statistically significant, except for recommendations 7 and 9, family medicine residents showed more adherences to most of the JNC8 recommendations than did internal medicine residents (8 out of 10 recommendations). However; there were no significant associations between resident's adherence and all demographic characteristics variables. Conclusion: Our study shows that the residents had a high level of awareness of the JNC 8 hypertension guidelines. Nevertheless, awareness of the guidelines does not necessarily lead to full adherence to the guidelines.