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HCTW news brief: Nurse phone calls can lower blood pressure, study says

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, November 13, 2009

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A team of doctors and nurses at Duke University Medical Center have created an intervention that it believes can help lower patients’ blood pressure. The intervention lasted two years and included a do-it-yourself monitoring plan and bi-monthly phone calls from a nurse.

The Duke team studied more than 600 patients that were divided into four groups. The first group got the normal intervention of drugs and periodic doctor visits. The second was given home blood pressure monitoring devices and the training to use them, and the third was called at home by nurses to discuss healthy living options. The fourth group got a combination of two and three, benefiting from home blood pressure monitoring devices and the nurse calls.

Researchers found that the fourth group had the greatest blood pressure drop, with an 11% reduction on average. The patients who only monitored their blood pressure saw a 7.6% drop, and patients who got the phone calls alone recorded a 4.3% drop.

The team hopes the program will create curiosity in the medical field and said it would be able to begin implementation as soon as there was interest. The team has developed a training package and information, which they offer to public health clinics, hospitals, and doctors’ offices.

Source: The Wichita Eagle

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