Medication Literacy in a Cohort of Chinese Patients Discharged With Essential Hypertension

Although physicians' communication skills have been found to be related to clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction, teaching of communication skills has not been fully integrated into many medical school curricula or adequately evaluated with large-scale controlled trials. To determine whether communications training for medical students improves specific competencies known to affect outcomes of care. A communications curriculum instituted in 2000-2001 at 3 US medical schools was evaluated with objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs). The same OSCEs were administered to a comparison cohort of students in the year before the intervention. One hundred thirty-eight randomly selected medical students (38% of eligible students) in the comparison cohort, tested at the beginning and end of their third year (1999-2000), and 155 students in the intervention cohort (42% of eligible students), tested at the beginning and end of their third year (2000-2001). Comprehensive communications curricula were developed at each school using an established educational model for teaching and practicing core communication skills and engaging students in self-reflection on their performance. Communications teaching was integrated with clinical material during the third year, required clerkships, and was supported by formal faculty development. Standardized patients assessed student performance in OSCEs on 21 skills related to 5 key patient care tasks: relationship development and maintenance, patient assessment, education and counseling, negotiation and shared decision making, and organization and time management. Scores were calculated as percentage of maximum possible performance. Adjusting for baseline differences, students exposed to the intervention significantly outperformed those in the comparison cohort on the overall OSCE (65.4% vs 60.4%; 5.1% difference; 95% confidence interval [CI], 3.9%-6.3%; P<.001), relationship development and maintenance (5.3% difference; 95% CI, 3.8%-6.7%; P<.001), organization and time management (1.8% difference; 95% CI, 1.0%-2.7%; P<.001), and subsets of cases addressing patient assessment (6.7% difference; 95% CI, 5.9%-7.8%; P<.001) and negotiation and shared decision making (5.7% difference; 95% CI, 4.5%-6.9%; P<.001). Similar effects were found at each of the 3 schools, though they differed in magnitude. Communications curricula using an established educational model significantly improved third-year students' overall communications competence as well as their skills in relationship building, organization and time management, patient assessment, and negotiation and shared decision making-tasks that are important to positive patient outcomes. Improvements were observed at each of the 3 schools despite adaptation of the intervention to the local curriculum and culture.

The risk factors for cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are more prevalent in the Chinese population, and therefore, increase the incidence of CVD. In general, CVD morbidity and mortality will remain an upward trend in the next 10 years. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in China, which accounts for >40% of deaths from any cause. The burden of CVD is substantial and has become an important public health issue. Measures for the prevention and treatment of CVD in China should be further enforced without delay. Since 2005, the National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases has organized experts of cardiology, neurology, nephrology, diabetes, epidemiology, community health, health economics, biostatistics, and other related fields to compile the annual Report on Cardiovascular Diseases in China. The report aims to provide a timely review of the trend of the epidemic of CVD and to assess the progress of prevention and control of CVD. We present an abstract from the Report on Cardiovascular Diseases in China (2014), including trends in CVD, morbidity and mortality of major CVD, up-to-date assessment of risk factors, as well as health resources for CVD, and a profile of medical expenditure, with the aim of providing evidence for decision making in CVD prevention and control programmes in China, and of delivering the most authoritative information on CVD prevention and control for all citizens.

The importance of adherence to antihypertensive treatments for the prevention of cardiovascular disease has not been well elucidated. This study evaluated the effect of antihypertensive medication adherence on specific cardiovascular disease mortality (ischemic heart disease [IHD], cerebral hemorrhage, and cerebral infarction). Our study used data from a 3% sample cohort that was randomly extracted from enrollees of Korean National Health Insurance. Study subjects were aged ≥20 years, were diagnosed with hypertension, and started newly prescribed antihypertensive medication in 2003 to 2004. Adherence to antihypertensive medication was estimated as the cumulative medication adherence. Subjects were divided into good (cumulative medication adherence, ≥80%), intermediate (cumulative medication adherence, 50%-80%), and poor (cumulative medication adherence, <50%) adherence groups. We used time-dependent Cox proportional hazards models to evaluate the association between medication adherence and health outcomes. Among 33 728 eligible subjects, 670 (1.99%) died of coronary heart disease or stroke during follow-up. Patients with poor medication adherence had worse mortality from IHD (hazard ratio, 1.64; 95% confidence interval, 1.16-2.31; P for trend=0.005), cerebral hemorrhage (hazard ratio, 2.19; 95% confidence interval, 1.28-3.77; P for trend=0.004), and cerebral infarction (hazard ratio, 1.92; 95% confidence interval, 1.25-2.96; P for trend=0.003) than those with good adherence. The estimated hazard ratios of hospitalization for cardiovascular disease were consistent with the mortality end point. Poor medication adherence was associated with higher mortality and a greater risk of hospitalization for specific cardiovascular diseases, emphasizing the importance of a monitoring system and strategies to improve medication adherence in clinical practice.