P152 PHYSICIANS’ KNOWLEDGE OF HYPERTENSION CLINICAL PRACTICE GUIDELINE AND ITS CORRELATION WITH ADHERENCE

Background: Hypertension remains the main cardiovascular risk factor. Despite the availability of high-quality clinical practice guidelines (CPG), their implementation is suboptimal pending on several factors, including clinicians’ knowledge of the guideline. The purpose of this study is to report clinicians’ knowledge the Colombian hypertension CPG, their adherence to it and the correlation between them. Methods: We performed a cross-sectional study with clinicians from 5 health-care institutions in Bogotá, Colombia, who voluntarily accepted to participate. A panel of experts selected seven recommendations from the Colombian hypertension CPG and designed a 17-item questionnaire to evaluate knowledge of the CPG. We consulted electronic health-records of a consecutive sample of 20 patients with hypertension treated by the clinicians to evaluate adherence (percentage of applicable recommendations that were fulfilled) and the questionnaire was sent via email to evaluate CPG knowledge (percentage of correct answers). Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated for clinicians’ knowledge and adherence. Results: From 266 physicians screened, 239 agreed to participate, 68 reported treating patients with hypertension and 38 answered the questionnaire (52% male, mean age and clinical experience 35.1 and 9.8 years, respectively). The mean score of CPG knowledge was 57.9% (95%CI 56.3-59.4%) and it did not differ according to clinicians’ sex or experience. Of the 38 physicians, 27 had available records of patients with hypertension. There was no difference in the mean knowledge score of clinicians who had eligible patients and those who did not (p=0.55). The mean adherence to the recommendations of clinicians who had eligible records (n=37) was 25.81% (IC95% 20.3-31.2%). This was similar for physicians who did and did not answer the knowledge questionnaire. A moderate positive correlation was shown between knowledge and adherence to recommendations (r 0.55, 95%CI 0.19-0.76, p=0.003) (Figure 1.) Conclusions Clinicians’ knowledge of CPG was moderate but adherence to recommendations was poor. While adherence could be partially explained by clinicians’ knowledge of CPG, correlation was at best moderate and other factors must be considered.